IN 1971, a group of San Francisco renegades set up a collective banning lazy hippies. Based in a warehouse, the Project One commune was heavily stocked with tools and technologies, including a mainframe computer, all directed toward community-building and radical activism. While it hardly conformed to counterculture back-to-the-land clich茅s, this hyperactive, tech-savvy collective embodied many qualities and values that connect the 1960s to Silicon Valley today.
The relationship between these seemingly disparate realms is one of the main themes of California: Designing freedom, an illustrated book that would look chic on any Californian coffee table, yet one that packs an impressive heft with five original essays by design scholars and practitioners.
Timed to coincide with the London Design Museum鈥檚 exhibition, the book sets out to show California design as a phenomenon, from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and from Hollywood鈥檚 golden age to the tech present. It鈥檚 about 鈥渟elling freedom鈥�, says Justin McGuirk, a curator at the Design Museum. 鈥淚t is about putting tools in your hands, so you can go where you want, say what you want, make what you want, see what you want and join who you want.鈥�
Advertisement
Each essayist takes one of McGuirk鈥檚 five freedoms to elucidate facets of California鈥檚 access-to-tools mentality. In the process, they cover an impressive range, from geodesic domes and desktop publishing to augmented reality and design theory.
As absorbing as these topics are on their own, it is especially interesting to note those that reappear, since their recurrence highlights a particular significance. Two stand-outs are the Whole Earth Catalog and the graphical user interface (GUI).
First published out of a shopfront in Menlo Park in 1968, with 鈥渁ccess to tools鈥� as a motto, the Whole EarthCatalog was a sort of self-sufficiency encyclopedia to help you design your entire life. In addition to articles describing DIY projects, there were addresses for ordering everything from potters鈥� wheels to computer books.
As designer Brendan McGetrick writes in his essay, the Catalog offered those tools, and itself, as 鈥減rototypes of a new relationship between the individual, information and technology鈥� 鈥� a relationship he traces to today鈥檚 makers and to Silicon Valley鈥檚 design-based philosophy, especially the idea of design as a tool for changing society. Elsewhere in the book, architectural historian Simon Sadler makes a lateral move, presenting Project One as 鈥渢he 颁补迟补濒辞驳鈥�s vision of community become real鈥�.
鈥淟ack of consensus and freedom to undermine its image are key to California鈥檚 design vitality鈥�
The graphical user interface, developed by Xerox at what is now PARC, was equally pivotal since intuitive visual interaction made the most powerful tool of all 鈥� the computer 鈥� accessible to everyone. Starting with the Xerox Alto but really taking off with the Apple Mac, the GUI facilitated desktop publishing and the World Wide Web, making the PC nothing less than, in McGuirk鈥檚 words, 鈥渁 tool鈥� of personal liberation鈥�.
If this book has a flaw, it is overemphasising northern California at the expense of the state鈥檚 south. With that comes an overdose of Silicon Valley鈥檚 personal-liberation Kool-Aid. McGuirk gamely tries to plot a role for Los Angeles, writing that 鈥淗ollywood has been the tech industry鈥檚 perfect counterpart. Films like Minority Report reveal a feedback loop鈥� Hollywood visualizes nascent innovations such as augmented reality in ways that become self-fulfilling鈥�.
That may be true, occasionally, but Hollywood has also offered up a counterpoint to the north鈥檚 tech obsessions with dystopian movies (Minority Report included). In the end, though, California is a place of contradictions, and that鈥檚 not a problem. The lack of consensus and freedom to undermine its image are key to the Golden State鈥檚 eternal design vitality.
Phaidon Press
听
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淐alifornia dreaming tools鈥�
