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Designing the Future by Robin Baker, Thames & Hudson, pp 208,
£28

There is an air of megalomania about Robin Baker’s Designing the Future,
an atmosphere that is only partly justifiable. The background to the book
is the development of Alan Turing’s universal machine from a computer specialist’s
theory to a palpable reality. It is the sense of the machine’s very universality
that makes the momentum of its conquest of our traditional modes of operation
apparently unstoppable. Baker takes us on a relentlessly enthusiastic ride
through various pre-viously disparate industries and activities in which
essentially the same machine, orch-estrated by different software, has radically
altered working practices and products.

The perspective from which the author observes this extraordinary technological
explosion is that of the designer, but it is not only with design applications
that the book concerns itself. In the introduction Baker writes that ‘implicit
throughout this book is the theme that the computer could be used as a bridge
between the cultures of art and science’, but he fails to define his understanding
of these cultures. Science and art are attitudes with readily definable
methodologies. Put simply, just because a person uses a tool that is a product
of scientific research does not mean that he or she is doing science. Likewise,
if an image arises out of scientific research that has some of the characteristics
of an artwork, this does not make it art.

In the section on sculpture, Baker cites William Latham’s Mutator program
that generates phantasmagorical images of forms to be selected for survival
by ‘artist-controlled aesthetic selection’. Again and again, he refers to
the aesthetic in relation to choices that have been made, but never pauses
to define it. He seems to think that the aesthetic is some kind of absolute;
most artists know it is not. Sculpture is the language of matter and space.
Computer space, simulated matter, silicon, pixellated volumes and skeins
of ink delivered with razor accuracy by laser printers are rich territory
for sculptural inquiry. But both Baker and Latham seem satisfied with the
image, and decline to make the materiality of their work a functioning part
of the experience of it.

At the end of the largest section of the book, which gives case histories
of ways in which software has transformed design and production, Baker argues
that we should be seeking overarching disciplines, defined by more general
characteristics, in educating future generations of textile designers, architects
and industrial designers, instead of adhering to ‘outmoded Nineteenth Century
categories’. He feels that these disciplines ‘are converging as they increasingly
overlap within a digital base’. Surely, he must know that the nature of
questions provoked by an intricately woven fabric are different from those
provoked by an intricately pixellated image of that fabric? Both are interesting
and potentially useful but they are profoundly different.

The structure of the book takes us through the intellectual and technological
background to the visual use of computing in the 1960s and 1970s, from Ivan
Sutherland’s work on the enormous and unwieldy ‘Sketchpad’ to the realisation
of the PC and the friendly graphical user interface made popular by Apple’s
Macintosh. It then examines the development of graphical software which,
at first, mimicked the capacity of traditional design tools and pictorial
understandings but rapidly moved on to programs with an identity of their
own, such as the hyper-real rendering and ray-tracing software or image-generating
algorithms. After establishing the pervasiveness of computing in our present
working environment, Baker suggests ways in which the technology of the
future – neural networks, virtual reality, process data visualisation and
rapid prototyping – will transform our understanding of reality. Indeed,
his vision of the democratisation of information technology through interactive
multimedia is very enticing.

But for whom has the book been written? Certainly not for the computer
literate nor really the interested outsider. It has the feel of a multinational’s
annual report to its shareholders – enthusiastically asserting the global
beneficence of its activities while ignoring or glossing over anything that
might give rise to doubt. Every layout trick on the disc has been used to
spread design over every page – but to what end? Perhaps to stop it from
being read and thought about. Like a virtual sandwich this book looks better
than it tastes.

Andrew Sabin is an artist. An exhibition of his work is at the Henry
Moore Institute, Leeds.