kinetic optimism studio
kinetic optimism studio

notes

 

These are notes from an ongoing inquiry into how people and technology relate to each other — and into what design can do when that relationship is still being formed.

They are not finished positions.
They are thinking made visible, offered in the spirit in which the rest of this site is offered: as an open invitation to the conversation.

We are in a period when the relationship between people and technology is still being shaped — by AI, by connected systems, by platforms that are becoming participants in daily life before anyone has asked what kind of participants they should be.

Surplus of social possibility

 

Small talk bus stop

Surplus of social possibility

A bus stop is surrounded by birds.

Nobody designed for this. The birds are there regardless. They are part of the situation the bus stop is inside — the social life of this particular corner, this tree, this hour of the morning.

The stop shelters and displays schedules. It does not notice the birds.

This is what we mean by surplus of social possibility: the gap between what a connected system currently does in its situation and what the situation actually contains. The relations already present. The life already happening. The possibility that exists in every moment and is not accessed by the current interaction pattern.

The surplus is always there. In every parking structure, every vehicle, every healthcare platform, every home. Design does not create it.

Design finds it.

The question that produces new design propositions is not: what feature should we add? It is simpler and more demanding: what is already here, and what would it mean for the system to notice it?

 
wojtek szumowski