Ali Rahim discusses how contemporary design techniques create for new effects that result in further cultural transformation that previous techniques could not accomplish. This is done through a feedback loop that are temporal process-driven methods that produce new effects in cultural, political and social production. Rahim emphasizes that techniques have always contributed to human production but it has been refined and accelerated after the industrial revolution.
Rahim states that the path of evolution that a building, company, or career produces a lineage which can be political, social, commercial, scientific etc. These lineages produce an effect in our culture and then are transmitted to other cultures as memes. Memes can either be hereditary when details and forms are copied, variation in which behavior is copied with errors, or selection in which only some behaviors are copied.
I think the analogy of the computer serves as a good example of technology being immersed in its cultural context and having qualitative effects. The computer was created as a result of contribution from scholars, philosophers, mathematicians etc. and its creation was stimulated over time by a shared vision. Everyone shared different economic, commercial, political and scientific pressure and eventually a new technology emerged as the computer. The computer as an object in a “vacuum” would merely be “linear and casual” with no formal expression. When viewed in its cultural context, we realize the technology can produce effects that are larger that originally anticipated. The internet was created for military purposes, but now is the largest holder of data anywhere in the world. The analogy serves to illustrate how to fully maximize potential provided by contemporary techniques
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