Too Small Too Fail: Designing A Future? Call A Designer

The gadget on the left, along with its companion, itunes, changed the way we listen to, purchase, share, and distribute music.

Shockingly, Friends, it was not created by the Music Industry, which didn't like it one little bit.

I still have my first ipod, which I won in a contest. Like all of those original machines, its battery eventually died and was not worth replacing, since the design and technology had progressed so rapidly that we could buy much more machine for much less. I still have it, because it is a work of art worthy of a perch in a museum. Once in a while I just take it out and look at it, as someone else might stare at their special photo of Stephanie Seymour.

If you google "the amazon," you will see this photo of a mighty river in South America. If you google "amazon," you will connect to a product that made finding and ordering books simple and less expensive with a single click of your mouse or phone.

Stunning news! This system was not imagined, funded, designed or implemented by the Publishing Industry. They hated it, all of it, with a mighty hate.

I still buy many books at retail from small  independent booksellers like Diane's in Greenwich CT, and McNally Jackson, Crawford Doyle, and Mysterious Books in Manhattan. I still do it, because I don't mind paying more for the knowledge these shops share with me, and for the aesthetic, tactile experience of browsing and choosing books. But amazon is here to stay.

The Publishing Industry didn't care that it had been killing off these indie shops through its relationships with Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and other behemoths. This cabal was so focused on its own needs, instead of the readers', that it could not change the system. So amazon did it for them. Now, they are playing catch-up with amazon and apple on digitized content and hardware like Kindles and ipads too.

Back to Apple and its iphone, pictured on the left, which did for the cellular phone world what ipod/itunes did for the music world.


By now, you will not be surprised to hear that the Cellular Industry itself could not make this quantum leap in design and technology. Huge companies lack imagination, except when it comes to compensation for their executives, who wouldn't know a bit from a bat.


But, we think you get our point by now: as Mr. Einstein said: "You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew."

Election Day is approaching. Many will go to the polls in anger and confusion, others will go out of habit or a sense of duty, and many millions will not go at all.  We will all be looking to the Political Industry and its enablers in Media to solve our tax, health, auto, financial, job creation issues to name just a few. Why do we think this will work any better than what happened with the Music, Publishing, and Cellular industries?

The Political Industry, in Washington has become completely corrupted. At times it looks like one huge money-laundering scheme, no matter what color political stripe you wear. How will a couple of billionaire candidates, 24-hour TV ranting, or a Tea Party make radical change? Duh.

In my home state, former NYC mayor, Mr. Ed Koch, is spearheading a statewide "reform" movement; he is asking his friends and even a few enemies, who created the messy New York State  government in the first place, to gather together and make it better. We are almost tempted to believe that someone best known for enacting the city's Pooper-Scooper Law might be perfect for the job.

Think again. Instead, we say, don't try to reform from inside, shred. Assign the task of re-design to the Designers, the Engineers, the Original Thinkers.The designers of the Declaration and Constitution (talk about killer apps!) not only could not get elected today or get their own reality TV show, they'd be put in jail or the nuthouse, quick.

Let's give our contemporary re-design  job to the women and men at creative enterprises  like IDEO, which will begin with no assumptions and with a clean white  page, be it analog or digital:  http://www.ideo.com/

Or, how about Apple or Google.Let's put Steve Jobs & the Google Twins in a room with their teams for ten days and see what they come up with; throw in Miuccia Prada to re-design the 1040A!

They have to do better than this mess! Let's hire professional designers to do re-design work.

Otherwise, you might want to begin brushing up on your Mandarin,       Comrades.

Ed Note: Feeling perplexed about how things have been going for the last dozen years? Are you wondering if our culture can excel and feel good about itself again without arrogance? We have an answer for you. Go directly to the nearest theatre and watch Secretariat by Walt Disney Studios (bet Walt could improve things). An even better idea: see it twice and send a copy to your local pols, when it comes out on DVD.