Technology Changing Design

There is a battle in our society between the traditional and the modern. The most prevalent is the advancement of technology and how it is working to replace all things old-fashioned. Color TV has changed to Plasma. Plasma has turned to LCD. And LCD has now turned to 3D. And with the advancement of technology, the design for them has changed as well.

Before computer technology, form and function was the dominant interaction in design. Like the film Objectified discuss, if an alien were to land on our planet and saw a spoon, a knife, or a fork, one could say with some certainty that the alien would be able to guess what the object was. Even if the alien was unfamiliar of our society, the form in which these utensils were design was based on its function. If one look at computer on the other, this is not the case. When an alien is first looking at a computer, it cannot guess what the function is. Only after when it is able to turn it on and interact with the interface can it guess the function of the computer. With that said, technology makes it so that design is no longer restricted to form and function. It creates an entirely different concept that has now been called interaction design. The concept which pertains to objects that require interaction. And without interaction there can be no function. This brings us back to the idea of form and function. If interaction is an extension of function, technology still follows the general concept of design based on function.