Becoming Human by Design

Abstract

The last in Tony Fry’s celebrated trilogy of books continues his radical rethinking of design. Becoming Human by Design’s provocative argument presents a revised reading of human ‘evolution’ centred on ontological design. Examining the relation of design to the nature of the human species - where the species came from, how it was created, what it became and its likely future - Fry asserts that current biological and social models of evolution are an insufficient explanation of how ‘we humans’ became what we are. Making a case for ontological design as an evolutionary agency, the book posits the relation between the formation of the world of human fabrication and the making of mankind itself as indivisible. It also functions as a provocation to rethink the fate of Homo sapiens, recognising that all species are finite and that the fate of humankind turns on a fundamental Darwinian principle - adapt or die. Fry considers the nature of adaptation, arguing that it will depend on an ability to think and design in new ways.

Despite the Terrors of Typologies

“…Given that, as we have already shown, ordering and classification have been part of the human condition since long before the dominance of the modern, they cannot be made the basis of a definition of this new way of seeing and encountering in the world. But confining designing-of-itself to the modern is also questionable (Fry 2012).…”

Mapping Indigenous Futures: Decolonising Techno-Colonising Designs

“…Strategic Design Research Journal, volume 11, number 2, May-August 2018 I extend this debate from an ontological design perspective, stated clearest by Anne Marie-Willis to mean, "we design our world, while our world acts back on and designs us" (Willis, 2007, p. 70; see also, Winograd, 1987;Fry, 2012;Lopes, 2017;Stewart, 2015, on 'Ontological Design'). The agency that results from humans' relations with digital socio-communicative technologies is ontologically designing either an extension of time for humans as a species, what design philosopher Tony Fry names 'futuring', or destroying human futures, what he names 'defuturing'.…”

Cinco eixos para uma Filosofia do Design

“…Alguns de tais esforços provêm do campo da filosofia e de suas derivações nas ciências humanas e sociais, e se debruçam sobre questões relacionadas ao design (por exemplo, barthes, 2001; baudrillard, 2008; flusser, 2010; latour, 2008; sloterdijk, 2005; canevacci, 2001; verbeek, 2005; boutinet, 2002); outros, provêm do campo do design e buscam na filosofia e nas ciências humanas e sociais algumas chaves para uma melhor compreensão de problemas do design (Por exemplo, love, 2000(Por exemplo, love, , 2002galle, 2002vial, 2014;fry, 2013).…”