Designing for the infrastructures of everyday life
Summary
Asking after the dynamics of artificial intelligence's extraordinary recent rise recalls Hemingway's famous line about going bankrupt: "In two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." That combination underscores the emergence of many technologies, of course. It creeps up on us, and then is suddenly moving at speed, everywhere. This makes it hard for cities and places to work with the grain of tech, in order to produce equitable or sustainable outcomes. Although we rarely do it, tech asks us to step back and ask the deeper questions lurking behind all the noise. In this talk I'll describe how everyday technologies, digital and physical combined, define how we live together; how they tend to articulate what we stand for as a society, or how our cities work — and what's on the table now. Drawing together inspiring projects and cases ranging from Norway to Japan, and from new cities to reimagined regions, I'll suggest how we might align design practices in order to address our contemporary shared challenges, like climate breakdown, social cohesion, and sweeping demographic changes. As AI moves beyond shuffling playlists or improving grammar and starts coordinating mobility, energy, and water systems, or how housing is allocated or buildings are made, we must rapidly figure out how design, governance, and community best understand and take advantage of these new distributed, decentralised and collaborative technologies. In doing so, we might well challenge our preconceptions of technology, economy, and community themselves.
Key Insights
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Technology like cars has irreversibly shaped urban sprawl and city form, often with negative health and environmental outcomes.
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AI’s progress is gradual then sudden, necessitating proactive systemic design before widespread adoption.
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Design must consider multiple interconnected scales: individual, service, city, region, and global.
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Effective AI design requires balancing technical optimization with broader social, cultural, and environmental contexts.
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Soft eyes—the ability to zoom between detailed instances and larger systems—is a crucial skill for designers integrating AI.
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Current AI and digital platforms, like ride sharing, often worsen urban problems by incentivizing more cars, despite individual convenience.
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Systemic containment and participatory governance are vital to handle AI’s influence on critical infrastructures like mobility and energy.
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Design can amplify social fabric, as demonstrated by Oslo’s bike sharing scheme involving prisoner rehabilitation, linking social justice with infrastructure.
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Resource constraints for green technologies, like electrification and batteries, highlight the need for AI to optimize sustainable material use.
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Cultural imagination techniques, including speculative design and fiction, help anticipate AI’s broader societal impacts beyond technical solutions.
Notable Quotes
"Technology affects cities directly and profoundly, shaping how we live, work, and play."
"The car is probably one of the most negative technologies we’ve introduced at scale."
"When asked how he went bankrupt, he said in two ways: gradually and then suddenly — that’s how technology evolves."
"Design is not really about problem solving; it’s about cultural imagination."
"Can we build AI systems that foreground social fabric and enable civil conversations around shared resources?"
"Soft eyes means zooming between the instance and the system, between the tree and the forest."
"We need distributed, shared, and participatory technologies for common good outcomes."
"If we don’t design AI thoughtfully now, it will be too late when it suddenly hits us."
"Designing a chair means considering its next larger context: the room, the house, the environment."
"Culture, fiction, and art allow us to rehearse and imagine dangerous or extreme futures safely before they happen."
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