The Design Line: 5 – 11 November
If it’s an insightful news roundup of the social impact of design you want, look no further than Design Line. This week features a VR headset that will murder you, a step forward for solar power, and Virgil Abloh’s posthumous gift to young Black designers.
A video game that’s really to die for (image: Palmer Luckey).
The Clockwork oculus
This week saw Palmer Luckey, billionaire entrepreneur behind the Oculus VR headset, reveal that he has designed a new headset that can intentionally kill its user. Three explosive charge modules in the device can be coded to fire on and instantly destroy the wearer’s brain at different points during a video game – for example, when the “game over” screen is displayed. So, authentic, monstrous tech wheeze, or satirical comment on tech courtesy of a plucky billionaire? To fans of anime Sword Art Online, Luckey’s creation is instantly recognisable as a form of fan art. He revealed his creation on November 6th, a date in the anime when hundreds die at the hands of killer “NerveGear” headsets – devices that Luckey has now materialised as the “first non-fiction example of a VR device that can actually kill the user”. Described by Luckey as “just a piece of office art”, the headset offers an interesting provocation around the age-old discussion circling the ethics surrounding violent video games. Luckey states that his intention is to “instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it”. In this respect, the headset almost feels like an anti-gaming advert – a strong, Ludovico Technique-style warning that users will face consequences for their video-game crimes.
Peter Barber, the thinking architect’s crumpet (image: Matt Tidby).
A popular pick
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the architecture world loves Peter Barber. Truth be told, what’s not to like? Barber is an outstanding architect who has devoted his talents towards the provision of social housing that is considerate of its inhabitants, architecturally inventive, and creative around its use of sites that would send lesser practitioners running for the hills. It is surprising (and feels like something of an oversight) that Barber’s work within affordable housing has never claimed the Stirling Prize, but welcome redress came this week with the news that Barber had been selected as the fifth recipient of the Soane Medal, an award given “to a person who has made a genuine impact in the furthering and enrichment of the public understanding of architecture”. Overseen by London’s Sir John Soane’s Museum, the prize was awarded to Barber for his work in the “understated but vital field of affordable housing, creating spaces that connect with existing urban fabric and provide an environment to nurture new communities.” Barber is both a worthy and popular winner, and he greeted news of his victory with pleasing understatement and social awareness: “At a time of such uncertainty,” he noted, “it’s really great to see social housing centre stage.”
The RCA Virgil Abloh Scholarship will support Black student talent (image: RCA).
A legacy to be proud of
London’s Royal College of Art launched a design scholarship this week for underrepresented communities in the creative industries. Founded in honour of the late Virgil Abloh, with financial support from an anonymous donor, the RCA Virgil Abloh Scholarship will offer a total of £35,000 to a “talented, but financially restricted Black British student”. A year after his death, Abloh remains an inspirational figure, not least for his success across multiple industries that have been slow to recognise and promote the talents of Black practitioners. It was a legacy of which Abloh was conscious, having
raised more than $1m for his “Post-Modern” scholarship fund in 2020 to help foster a new generation of Black fashion industry leaders, and it’s encouraging to see the RCA continue this work in his name. Inspirational figureheads such as Abloh, who rise to prominence despite the presence of structural roadblocks that hamper diversity within the design industries, are crucial to motivate young people to pursue their passions. Yet it is programmes like the RCA scholarship that can begin to clear some of these roadblocks for others. Here’s hoping that we see further opportunities of this kind moving forward, as well as encouragement for pre-university age students – even entering design education can be a daunting decision without (financial) support systems in place.
Truly dangerous levels of toxicity here, if you’re on a playground maybe (image: Robert Gordon via Twitter).
Robot swear detector
Despite popular culture’s passion for depicting villainous AI as being hellbent on taking over the world, in reality machine learning is only as smart as you programme it to be – as demonstrated this week after a controversial report published by the BBC was picked apart by experts who found its design, shall we say, lacking. An algorithm developed by Perspective API, which claims to “help mitigate toxicity and ensure healthy dialogue online” was used to analyse thousands of mean tweets sent to members of the UK’s parliament in order to rank them according to which politician received the most “toxic” abuse. Weirdly, the AI didn’t pick up on gender or race as a factor, despite women and minorities famously having a much worse time of it on the internet and in the public eye. Tech experts and journalists who played around with the detector system quickly found it was laughably skewed, with egregious racist and sexist comments given the green light, while calling someone a “poo poo head” or a “Tory” was rated extremely toxic. Essentially, Perspective API seems to have developed a fancy robot swear detector with a healthy dose of bias. Politicians should certainly be able to go about their business serving their public without receiving a torrent of nasty messages on a public forum, but this incident serves as a timely reminder not to blindly trust AI to be smart.
If you’re fired in the metaverse, do you lose your job in real life (image: Meta)?
Collapse of the metaverse
Tech giant screw-up of the week is: Meta! The company has followed Twitter, Snapchat, Lyft, and many others in wielding the axe, resulting this week in the layoff of around 11,000 employees – nearly triple the number recently slashed by Twitter. The company expanded rapidly during lockdown when engagement with its platforms was at an all-time high, peaking at a valuation of more than $1tn. Since then, however, Meta has experienced a 50 per cent drop in profits, resulting in a 70 per cent drop in stock price. Today, Meta is worth around $270bn. Reasons for the decline are myriad, but it seems clear that huge amounts of money are being funneled into founder Mark Zuckerberg’s pet VR projects, which are yet to turn a profit. While Zuck himself will likely weather the storm just fine, it’s employees further down the food chain (of course) who are now being fired, or else facing cost-saving cuts to their free meals and dry-cleaning perks – which, to be honest, seem the main appeal of working for Meta. The science-fiction reality that we had begun to accept – one in which tech bros wield more power than presidents and hoard the world’s wealth while indulging in remote, rustic lifestyles – may be beginning to come apart at the seams. For now, we’re waiting to see if Meta bounces back. Perhaps its repeated gross mismanagement will even result in some long-overdue changes at the top.
Solar parking
With Europe’s energy crisis in full effect, France is leaning into renewables, with the country’s Commission for Energy Regulation announcing this week that it anticipates its energy sector will bring in €30.9bn of revenue in 2022-2023. It’s all part of what France’s president Emmanuel Macron has billed as a “massive acceleration” of renewable energy in the country, of which early fruits ripened this week with the news that France’s senate had passed legislation requiring all car parks that can house at least 80 vehicles (whether new builds or existing spaces) to be covered by solar panels: a scheme the government hopes will generate up to 11 gigawatts of power. The car parks have between three to five years to comply, dependent upon their size. For a country traditionally dependent upon nuclear power, but which is now struggling to perform repairs and maintenance on many of its reactors, it’s an interesting shift, even if the production of solar panels itself brings sustainability challenges. Today its the carparks – who knows what tomorrow will bring as France pushes towards a more renewable future.