Stunned utterly to find that part of the reading involves Chiat/Day, the ad agency that came up with the Apple macintosh ad I've posted on my student page.
Can I tell you how much I love that ad? I didn't even watch the Super Bowl that year - I was in my freshman year of college, and as a young punk rock enthusiast in DC, football was not quite my scene - but for a film maven & Ridley Scott junkie, that is the ad. I'd read Orwell, but hadn't truly understood him. Like reading Joyce two years later; academically useful, not exactly intuitive.
Like Chiat/Day: what were they thinking? Why did they think that people would surrender their personal space? Why didn't they intuit that the organizational hierarchies would remain in place? Didn't they understand their own dynamics? People will reorganize themselves into what seems most familiar to them. You can't impose a technology or a mindset upon a people without rebellion, or destruction.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I studied some organizational psychology when I was an undergrad, and the description of how people tried to maintain their expected social order in the face of Chiat/Day's stab at workplace equality and stimulation amused me to no end. It's actually really interesting to see what happens when companies try the 'latest thing', whether it be seating layout or technology or both. As Brown & Duguid point out, human beings over time transform whatever they create to fit the familiar social context--give them something new to work with and eventually they'll twist it until it's a round peg going into a square hole. We are a fascinating bunch, really!
(and the universe is conspiring against me, because the word verification I have to type in for this comment starts with xml, which is what I should be studying right now for my other class!)
Post a Comment