"Steam power, electricity and telecommunications caused revolutions. Our revolution will be computation.”

DO Takeaways

1. The future will be confusing.
2. Is knowledge always power?
3. Technological advances could become ethical dilemmas.

The Talk

Year: 2012
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The explosive evolution of technology is part of our daily lives in a way we couldn’t have imagined only a few years ago. Most of us will have pretty strong memories of mobile phones the size of house bricks, Internet that had a dialing tone and television with only three channels.

Now every year there’s a new iphone, a faster laptop, a better camera and that constant expansion of technological advances has created a whole new type of designer. ‘Designers that can’t draw’, like Chris Heathcote. He doesn’t deal with typeface, or colour, or art.

“My medium is the present, or the recently possible.”

That means mediums like mobile phones, the Internet, GPS, wifi, games consoles and apps. For the past fifteen years, Chris has been taking the most recent advances in computers and applying them to every day life. It’s an acquired skill, knowing the difference between what can be done and what should be done. In most cases, it’s down to these new age designers to decide the likely ramifications of a technology, the convenience of it in the right hands versus the danger in the wrong.

“I really believe designers have a responsibility. If you design something, you should live with it and the consequences of it.”

Far from the time where personal computers were a rare luxury for the few, redesigned and repackaged technology squeezes itself into our lives in as many formats as possible. It’s in kid’s toys, in fridges, in watches, in our phones. It’s cheap and ubiquitous, accessible to everyone. We measure that leap often, but in his DO Lecture, Chris urges our eyes forwards and to the possibilities these continually growing advances mean for our future.

“I could have picked from a million examples of how computers are changing your life but I wanted to choose something maybe you haven’t thought of before. And that’s genetics.”

Back in 2004, the first full genome was published. It took fourteen years to achieve and it cost around $100 million. Today, it costs about $1000 and if you only want to process the 1% of your genes that are specific to you, it takes little more than $100 and a couple of weeks.

“You pay your 100 bucks, they send you a kit, you spit into a tube, you send it to their lab, you log on and see your genes.”

Scarily easy, right?

If, as a society, we went from mobile phones being an expensive rarity to a ubiquitous necessity in about a decade, does that mean it won’t be all that long before we each know the intimate ins and outs of our DNA?

“It will reveal things that maybe you didn’t want to know or you shouldn’t need to know.”

With just a little saliva and a short wait, we could each know what diseases we’re at most risk of, how we respond to certain medicines, what immunities we have, what genes we carry that can be passed on to our children, how we respond to exercise and even how we taste our food. When this is common knowledge, as common as a phone in your pocket, what does the future hold? Personalised medical treatments? Prejudice health care cover? Bespoke menus in restaurants? The mind boggles with seemingly endless possibilities.

“There are a lot of ethical questions that pop up from knowing your genes and how you live your life with those. It’s a huge can of worms.”

Chris’ talk is a strikingly thought provoking discussion that incites both fear and awe of the near future and opens the mind to the opportunities and pitfalls of a technology when it’s open to the masses. In this day and age, Chris’ DO Lecture will continue to be relevant, important even, and definitely worth a watch.