Age of Design

I am marking this space to begin collecting my thoughts on the Age of Design. Future Shock, Network Nation, and Megatrends all predicted the information age. People would become information-empowered.  

The Internet connects people today and offers access to pricing, regulations, other government and public documents, as well as tools for manipulating data and producing more information.

Mega-trends emerging in this information enabled age include issues of information overload, technology design, importance of unified messaging or integration of systems (bundles of people, processes, and technology across organizations). As we realize we have added more and more to our jobs and our devices, I believe we are arriving at a critical point where we can step back and make choices. Prior "ages" were driven by scarcity - threat of inability to have goods and food drove the agricultural revolution and the industrial age.

The huge information asymetries concerning many types of information drove computerization and networking into the present age of the Internet and pervasive access through Yahoo! or Google. The Web 2.0 age presents the future: the ability to focus on design choices. Look at Dan Pink's book "A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future" for corroboration of this direction.

I term it the Age of Design: an age when people focus on intentionally crafting their lives. In work this will include the ability to choose when and how one works and in what field. In home life it will include how to have a family or now: with a spouse or not, with children or not, while working or staying home. All options from the recent past of 9 to 5 work in an office and a parent staying home remain available. What the Age of Design provides is alternatives we can more freely choose due to enabling technologies, ideas, and cultural norms. The house of the future points in this direction too. In consideration of design, here is a link on what has been successful and what has failed and why. I find it interesting to contemplate in terms of the issues of overload, options definition, and complexity resolution driving this new age.

Galvin Electrical Initiative