THE PINTEREST PACIFIER

TRANSPARENT DRAWING

 

Pinterest is all about comfort.  You input an image into the machine.  And the machine returns images with great similarity.  You like the image you put in.  You like the images you get back

You enter a photo of a house you like.  You get back a bunch of photos that you also like.  The machine images makes you feel justified.  It is self reinforcing.  You now feel like the designer.

When used as part of a design process, the Pinterest machine has become the design generator.  The uncanny way it returns images is powerful.  It becomes possible that you will not accept a solution unless the machine gives it back to you.  Unless the machine gives you an image that you instantly like, it is invalid to you.

What if the images that the machine returned to you were not similar to what you fed it?  What if they were jarringly dissimilar?   If that happened, you would say that the machine is worthless, broken, invalid.  The machine is only good if it gives images back to you that you like.  It is a great pacifier.

Early on the digital revolution, you would hear the phrase garbage in, garbage out.  You don’t hear that anymore.  And I think the reason is because of such edifices such as Pinterest.  Machine intelligence has evolved to the point that we no longer think that we get garbage back from it, no matter what we put into it.

The machine is evolving to be this powerful pacifier. The machine gives back only what feels good.  Maybe that’s ok if we are talking about cute kitty photos. But not for design. Not for architecture.  Analogue design may require a pushing against comfortable boundaries.

Pinterest and the like lowers the Design Risk Coeficient to an alarmingly low value.  Yet for good analogue design, the DRC needs to be high.  See quotient summary.

With the machine giving back exactly what you want to see, all other possibilities are eliminated.  So how, for example, can a watercolor drawing function amidst the sea of machine generated images?  The fact that the drawing is not produced by the machine is one demerit.  And if the drawing shows a solution that does not look remotely like any Pinterest image, then what is one to think?  If one is used to the self recirculating and pacifying machine image, then a hand drawn analogue watercolor drawing is nearly incomprehensible.  I offer this as a warning.

Let us resolve to not succumb to the pacification of the machine image.  Let’s reject the inclusion of Pinterest in design contexts.  Let’s resolve to keep our design quotients high.  Let us keep our designs analogue.  Keep a drawing a drawing.

 

 

 

 

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