Critical Response to The Things that Matter – by Peter-Paul Verbeek and Petran Kockelkoren
The year was 1998, Titanic was dominating the Oscars, Will Smith was “gettin’ jiggy wit it,” and recycling was seen as a solution and not a distraction. But despite the promises of recycling programs, Peter-Paul Verbeek and Petran Kockelkoren were approaching sustainability from a different angle.
At the time both were at Twente University in the Netherlands researching the relationships between people and artifacts in technological culture. They had been fascinated by the work of a group of Dutch industrial designers called Eternally Yours, who sought to extend the lifetime of objects by examining relationships humans built with them. Building on this idea, Verbeek and Kockelkoren dove deeper into human-object relationships by analyzing the ways in which artifacts are used, perceived, and how they can speak for themselves.
Eternally Yours identified 3 different lifespans a product has: the technical lifespan, the economic lifespan, and the psychological lifespan. While this model can aid in extending the lifespan of the products, in the eyes of Verbeek and Kockelkoren, it still only recognized products as symbols. They pondered how we could do justice to things as things?
The first step to giving objects their due is to understand scripts. According to Madeleine Akrich a script is “the deposit in an object of the worldview of designers.” That is to say, how the designer intends an object to behave, to be perceived, or to be used. Verbeek and Kockelkoren identified, however, that “things do more than we tell them to.” While scripts are written to the objects by their creators, “technological intentionality” is the script the object writes for itself. This intentionality allows objects to be more than “signs” or “designer intentions” and gives them more autonomy.
Finally, our authors use the concepts of “readiness-to-hand” (R2H) and “present-at-hand” (P@H) developed by Martin Heidegger to further do justice to things as things. When an object is R2H it is in full working order, while objects that are P@H are objects that demand our attention. A chain on a bicycle is R2H, but when that chain derails it becomes P@H. They identify an object moving from being P@H to R2H as a withdrawal. An R2H object “withdraws” from our involvement with the world because we don’t need to pay attention to the object itself so long as it fulfills its purpose. A piano, however, withdraws in a different manner than a bike chain. Verbeek and Kockelkoren argue that when a piano is R2H, it still has a large “engaging capacity,” that is to say it doesn’t fade into the background entirely; we’re still aware of the piano as we play it.
The way Verbeek and Kockelkoren build on previous philosophical analyses of objects achieves their goal of gaining justice for “thing as thing.” They critique Eternally Yours’ model for increasing object lifetime, and yet ultimately step towards the same result. Achieving justice for objects as objects, undoubtably extends their psychological lifetime. In my own practice, I see this goal of designing “things as things,” as a strategy to extend object lifetimes. If we design objects that age gracefully, we engage with them more, as we’re curious to see how that age affects performance. If we design objects that ask to be maintained in a way people understand, we grow attached to the object itself; its usability, its performance, its look even, is the result of our efforts to maintain it.
The concept of objects being either R2H or P@H is a false dichotomy. Our level of awareness of an object as an object is always in flux. A perfectly functioning ski is always slightly present, as we feel how the object reacts to various conditions, and are able to compare that feeling to how it behaved under similar ones in the past. A ski that needs waxing is not present-at-hand since it demands a similar level of awareness as a waxed ski. Finally giving it that layer of wax gives it a smoother ride, and the level of awareness is not so different but the enjoyment we receive is.
When it comes to seeing “things as things,” I believe part of that is designing things to age. Time comes for us all. As they grow older, a well designed object won’t become worse, only different. It’s important to understand and appreciate those differences. Overtime, a pair of jeans will soften and become less stiff. Seeing this age, and appreciating it, allows us to grow attached to the objects itself. That attachment is what prevents us from wanting to replace them. When we’re able to stop seeing objects as unchanging symbols, and start seeing them as objects that exist in this world and are subject to its natural laws, we’re able to give them the respect they’re owed.
Works Consulted
- Verbeek, P.-P., & Kockelkoren, P. (1998). The Things That Matter. Design Issues, 14(3), 28–42.