Towards an Ethics of Flow; Design as an Anticipatory System

This paper raises some provocative issues about the ethics of global consumerism, and the environmental damage that it causes. In calling for a deeper understanding, it takes as its starting point the consumer's experience of motion, reminding us that technological consumerism itself is now 'designed' as a system of flow, with hopes and desires becoming regularized as an anticipation for product innovation. This routine tends to impede the way we notice and appreciate what we already have. In this respect, designers, producers, and consumers can therefore be understood collectively as an anticipatory system. Many responsible designers welcome the advent of a ' post-industrial' society in which we focus on services, rather than upon material products. However, the paper suggests that this approach may be counterproductive. In taking a phenomenological perspective, it reminds us that the consumer's anticipation is manipulated to induce faster economic growth. Unfortunately, virtual products are almost always used to promote products that are more material. In addressing these issues, the paper argues that our culture assumes that 'ends' justify the 'means' and reminds us that the teleological mindset of classical science helped to deliver both the beneficial, and the damaging consequences of the technological society. In seeking to address these issues, the paper recommends that design practitioners challenge the strongly instrumentalist, teleological, and therefore anticipatory understanding of design itself. It therefore explores contradictions in the way we understand temporality, especially in discrepancies between categorical logic, and the heuristics of flow. Several alternative suggestions are offered as a way to reframe these problems.