When our ancestors lived in utter privation, hunted and gathered the little they chanced upon, and were at the mercy of nature, they found time to care deeply about art. When they painted, carved statues or melted bronze idols, they paid attention to aesthetics. They used art as a way to escape the harrowing reality of existing in a world that didn’t care much about them.
Art dawned with humanity. It helps us convey stories, ideas, spirituality, and to appreciate nature despite its many troubles. For something to be art, it needed to be intricately designed yet pleasing to the eye. And even though there is subjectivity in the appreciation of art, we can all agree that for anything to pass as art, it has to be, for lack of a better word, sexy. Art is anything but banal or ordinary.
Even Neanderthals, for all their primitivism, made art. They invented tools, painted and carved. Art is a human universal, for to be human is to be artsy and to be artsy is to be human. Language, architecture, music, statues, tattoos, paintings, scarifications (and other bodily designs), tools and technology form the repertoire of art we use to understand a people or a generation.
One of the things that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom is our ability to manipulate the environment and make it less inhospitable. And to achieve this, we use tools. The wheel, for instance, is one of the most important inventions in human history. It served a functional purpose in the transportation of humans and goods.
Yet, as functional as technology is, it also serves aesthetic purposes. Think of the monarch’s crown. Or the knight’s armour. These are functional pieces of technology designed intricately to be artsy. That blend of functionality and aesthetics is at the heart of technology and human civilisation. It is a delicate balancing act which, unfortunately, we seem to have lost today.
Modern technology scores high on functionality but low on beauty. Everything from cars to architecture to mobile phones has increasingly become soulless and hollow. My friend Matthew and I have an inside joke about making tech sexy again. This quip is a commentary on the state of modern technology for tilting the scale to favour function over art. We now make technology for technology’s sake. We do not layer it with colours, stories, spirituality, and emotions.
For the avoidance of doubt, I consider myself lucky to exist today. By no means am I being an ingrate for living in the most advanced generation in human history. By every metric, this is the best time to be alive. I wouldn’t trade places with any of my ancestors. For no fault of their own, our ancestors lived in squalor. Sure, they had art, spirituality and all that good stuff. But they also died from preventable infections. Their life expectancy was low; they lived on subsistence agriculture, and resided in mud houses with no plumbing or electricity. No one envies that life, not even bespectacled ancestor-worshipping African thinkers.
I can grant all of that while also acknowledging the hollowness of modern civilisation. From an engineering perspective, the Burj Khalifa is a behemoth of a miracle. Yet, it is one ugly building compared to the Pantheon in Rome or the Taj Mahal in India. Modern buildings sure have indoor plumbing, air conditioning, electricity, and everything that makes life easy. But they hardly inspire the kind of emotion you feel when you see the Petra in Jordan.
Smartphones are a good example of how modern technology is a product of the trade-off between artistry and functionality. These rectangular devices allow us to send emails, stream, connect to the World Wide Web, take pictures and videos, set alarms and reminders, play games, and do a host of other things. The average smartphone is faster than Apollo 11, the rocket that landed man on the moon in 1969. A great engineering invention notwithstanding, the smartphone is undeniably aesthetically generic, spiritually flat, and emotionally uninspiring. The lack of excitement you feel whenever you upgrade your iPhone is proof of this. The latest iPhone may have the sharpest camera yet, it may have a faster refresh rate and other bells and whistles, but the experience is ultimately the same as you had with an older model.
Back in the aughts, it was fun changing your phone from one model or brand to another. We don’t feel that anymore with smartphones. The cars of prior generations were made with artistic intentions. They may not be as functional as, say, the Cybertruck, but they were colourful. The brutalist design of the Cybertruck is a travesty of artistry; a soulless, unimaginative design. It is super fast, has steer-by-wire, a bulletproof body, and can drive on autopilot. It is a truly functional car. What it lacks in design, it makes up for in bells and whistles.
The disregard for design reflects how the notion of technology has changed from hardware to software. Peter Thiel was right when he said tech has morphed from the world of atoms to the world of bits. Tech today is more about coding and software development than it is about the mechanical. Smartphones are graded based on RAM, processor speed, storage, and other intangible features. Little wonder these phones all look ridiculously the same.
I suppose one can make an argument for design minimalism. Production has been automated. That leaves little room for artistic expression. Minimalism allows manufacturers to scale faster. If you are making a product for millions of potential buyers, you definitely don’t want to spend a lot of time on fine-tuning and intricacy in design. What matters more is the software. More so, the more intricate the design is, the more the product probably costs. And in the free market, you don’t want to lose your market share to your competitors who offer cheaper products because they prioritise function over art. It is an unavoidable trade-off. In the consumerist culture we live in, no one wants to pay more.
Perhaps one good thing about modern technology is that, in many ways, it is an equaliser. We all use pretty much the same technology today. The billionaire and the janitor both use the same iPhone or Android. Automation made things affordable, even for members of the lower class. But it has come at the cost of design hollowness. My prediction is that a time will come when we will revolt against modern technology; when consumers demand a little bit more than a brick of glass with three cameras at the back. Manufacturers would then have to re-imagine and prioritise design. There’s no real reason to constantly buy the latest iPhone or Tesla. The experience is always the same except for little tweaks here and there.
There are reasons to think that the revolt has begun. There is a growing number of people who are nostalgic about an era when technology blended function and art. The iPod, for instance, is making a comeback, even among Gen Z. We are a people starving for colour, stories, and poetry in technology. We’ve solved the problem of squalor. It’s time to solve the problem of unimaginative design in technology. It’s time to add some soul to our civilisation by making tech sexy again.