Designers Are Us!

Bloggers are designers. Blogjects are not.

In Bleecker’s manifesto, he really romanticizes and celebrates the new rising of the “blogject.” He actually got me excited about blogjects too. It is fascinating to see this new class of information transmitters, blogjects, begin to shape and change our physical world. I would argue that blogjects are even more reliable than humans. Take the Pigeon that Blogs for example. If one were to look at the Pigeon’s blog, one would find that the pigeon has been blogging steadily every x minutes. Because of this, one could appropriately assume that if ever one needed to find out the weather in the future, one would be able to find a blog that was posted within x minutes ago. A person however, is too spontaneous to be a reliable source for updated information. A person could blog every day, and then decide to not blog for one week. People do not have that internal code that goes: “If x-t=0, then take temperature of surroundings and blog.”

However, although humans are spontaneous, spontaneity is also a celebration of humans’ ability to choose. Bloggers choose to blog and blogjects just do it. Not only that, Bloggers choose how they are going to display information, while blogjects just do it. Bleecker says blogjects can effect change. If you were inside your room, which would affect you more?


The Spontaneous Blog of Human Subject Blogger:
“YOOOO!! It’s freaking cold out here! It’s awesome! Me, Jon, Sally, and Eric are gonna start a snowball fight! WOOOTT!! Come out and join us….NOW!”


The Consistent Blog of Pigeon Blogject:
“ Location: Cambridge
Temperature: 26.675 Degrees Fahrenheit.”


The Pigeon Blogject would probably only make you stay in your room, while the Human Subject Blogger could potentially draw you out into the cold weather. It was the human who was able to design his blog to match the intent of his blog. He was able to choose to use CAPS, “!!!’s”, and give an inviting tone. The pigeon’s blog was just a regurgitation of information – no design involved.

Why is design important? A better question is, how is design not important? Design dictates how humans perceive, receive, and interact with information. The way the blogger designed his blog, the cold outside actually seems appealing and positive. The blogject’s blog could not have been designed with any intent, except to perhaps inform people with information.

Good design can be powerful. If the human subject blogger designed his blog so that he mentioned a few popular kids that were coming to the snowball fight, a lot more kids that are fans of the popular kids would come out too. On to other aspects of design, some humans have also designed lots of information to look like very little information, to make information seem more manageable – a movement called “simplicity.” A good example of this is the iPod. Good design has made the iPod into a touch circle and a dot, when in reality, there are thousands of invisible lines of running code that say “If this is clicked, then do that,” and so on. Because the touch circle and dot have made the iPod seem like such a simple information device to use, it has been madly successful; I give Macintosh props. Listening to thousands of minutes of music has never been so convenient in the entire history of humanity. Go, Apple!

However, my point is not to solicit for Macintosh or to say blogjects are not good. My point is to say that as humans, as potential designers, we can be powerful information transmitters, even more so that those non-spontaneous blogjects. If blogjects can effect change in our physical world, bloggers (us!) can effect super-change in our physical world by learning how to design well the information we transmit.