When we think about our work as designers, we imagine ourselves with our head in the future, surrounded by the latest ideas of how things will be: the natural user interface, the internet of things and self-driving cars. Within this world it’s easy to forget that the future is made entirely out of ideas of the past. Everything we can imagine comes from this past and has been shaped by thousands of years of human history.
The past is often dismissed as a collection of outdated technologies and failed business models, and we derive great pleasure from reminiscing on how far we’ve come. This, however, only works if we look at the past through the limited frame of technological and economical progress. If we expand our vision and add society and culture to our view, we can see the past as a rich landscape of ideas, artefacts and people, all telling us something about what it means to be human.
How might we expand our vision and learn from the past?