John Maeda - How to Speak Machine: Computational Thinking for the Rest of Us

It was a typical cold, snowy New England winter day on December 17, 2004, when I started a WordPress web log on the topic of simplicity. There was a whimsical motivation to turning my research at MIT in that directionnamely, how the letters MIT occurred in perfect sequence in the words SIMPLICITY and COMPLEXITY. But there was a less Dr. Seussian motivation at play as well, which I wrote about in my first blog entry:

I have always been interested in how the computer (which is an object of great complexity) and design (which is traditionally about simplicity) tend to mix poorly together like the proverbial oil and water.

Subsequently, that blog turned into a book titled The Laws of Simplicity, which was rapidly translated into fourteen languages. Why was it unusually impactful? I think because it arrived at a time when computing technology was just starting to impact everyday lives back in the pre-iPhone era. That books overwhelming momentum and the concurrent rise of Apples successful fusing of design and technology oddly drove me to head in the opposite direction of computings inherent complexities and instead toward designing for simplicity.

I wanted to somehow get closer to the essence of design and move away from computers the way I had done once prior in my early careerback in the nineties, when I was a practicing graphic designer in Japan with a mismatched MIT pedigree. Id somehow managed to escape the T (Technology) of MIT as an engineering student, and then made a U-turn into the thick of it as an MIT Media Lab professor leading the intersection of design and advanced computing technologies. Perhaps it was dealing with the weight of earning tenure that made me feel stuck somewhere in the future of design. I wanted to reconnect with the classics. I think it was a mix of not knowing what to do with the MBA Id earned as a part-time hobby and an overwhelming mood in 2008 of Barack Obamas Yes, we can, combined with my desire to rekindle the past, that resulted in my becoming the sixteenth president of the esteemed temple of the art and design world: Rhode Island School of Design, or RISD.

A series of later milestones, which built upon the work I had long led at the MIT Media Lab, gave me a reputation as a fierce defender of design. These included, for instance, appearing before Congress to encourage putting an A, for Art, in STEM education, turning it into STEAM, and later launching the Design in Tech Reports while working in Silicon Valley at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. So in 2019, when a popular business magazine announced in a headline that Id said, In reality, design is not that important, it did not come as a surprise to me that I would be dragged through the internet mud by all lovers of design.

There were many short- and long-form responses to the interview that cast my responses as every shade of clueless and ignorant. I knew that the controversy had hit a peak when my idol, Hartmut Esslinger, the design force behind Apples original design language, started coming after me on social media. If I had earned some sort of badge in the design world, the internet was now ruling that it was my public duty to turn that badge in, and for a period of time I would be unwelcome at any Temple of Design out there. How did I feel? Terrible.

My words had been taken out of context from a twenty-minute phone interviewand, frankly, when the article came out, I immediately admired the editorial teams choice of headline as brilliant clickbait. Apparently, my interview was the highest-performing article on their website for quite some time, as evidenced by the myriad spears and cleavers that were continuously being lobbed in my direction. What stung the most was knowing that few people had really read the entire interview, so the headline was all that stuck in anyones mind. To them, I had completely demeaned the work designers do every day. So I needed to be punished.

Heres the reality: I honestly dont believe that design is the most important matter today. Instead, I believe we should focus first on understanding computation. Because when we combine design with computation, a kind of magic results; when we combine business with computation, great financial opportunities can emerge. What is computation? Thats the question I would get asked anytime I stepped off the MIT campus when I was in my twenties and thirties, and then whenever I left any technology company I worked with in my forties and fifties.

Computation is an invisible, alien universe that is infinitely large and infinitesimally detailed. Its a kind of raw material that doesnt obey the laws of physics, and its what powers the internet at a level that far transcends the power of electricity. Its a ubiquitous medium that experienced software developers and the tech industry control to a degree that threatens the sovereignty of existing nation-states. Computation is not something you can fully grasp after training in a learn to code boot camp, where the mechanics of programming can be easily learned. Its more like a foreign country with its own culture, its own set of problems, and its own languagebut where knowing the language is not enough, let alone if you have only a minimal understanding of it.

Theres been a conscious push in all countries to promote a greater understanding of how computers and the internet work. However, by the time a technology-centered educational program is launched, it is already outdated. Thats because the pace of progress in computing hasnt moved at the speed of humansits been moving at the exponential speed of the internets evolution. Back in 1999, when a BBC interviewer made a dismissive comment about the internet, the late musician David Bowie presciently offered an alternate interpretation: Its an alien life form... and its just landed here. Since the landing of this alien life form, the world has not been the sameand design as it has conventionally been defined by the Temple of Design no longer feels to me like the foundational language of the products and services worlds. Instead, its ruled by new laws that are governed by the rising Temple of Tech in a way that intrinsically excludes folks who are less technically literate.