Defining High-Technology:
A Design Perspective
What is High-Tech for them?
• Is it just a matter of more technology?
High-tech as Cultural Expression
– “High”-lights the non-instrumental.
– “High”-lights the non-technological.
High-tech merely simulates technology.
Brings back a meaning of technology that has been
obscured in our modern conception: art and
aesthetics.
Form and Function become separated!
High-Tech Design:
“…a style or design or interior decoration that
uses objects and articles normally found in
factories, warehouses, restaurant kitchens,
etc., or that imitates the stark functionalism of
such equipment.” – English Dictionary Entry.
High-tech Aesthetics
What does this mean?
• In the culture of High-Technology, modern
notions of technology are turned on their
heads!
– High-tech turns functionality and instrumentality
into something else.
But into what?
So, What is the Age of High-tech?
• Technology becomes a matter of
representation…
• …of style…
• …of design…
• …of image.
Having a High-Tech Style:
• From basketball shoes, to hair-cuts, to
apartments (with pipes and ducts in the open,
concrete floors, and glass walls, etc.), things
are being described as having a high-tech
style.
in high-tech then, the modern view of functional form
has been widely abandoned in favor of a technological
look or style that need not be functional in any
traditional sense.
High-Tech as Style
Bush’s Aircrafts
Saddam’s Aircraft
High-Tech as Style
High-Tech as Style
High-Tech as Style
High-Tech as Style
Dimensions of High-tech
•
•
Is starkly minimalist, functionalist interior design
high-tech?
Is the complex circuitry of a microprocessor hightech?
The dimensions of high-tech:
1) Minimalism (reducing objects to the most necessary
forms, miniaturize, streamline).
2) Complexity (miniaturization requires “more in less”).
Evidence in the Marketplace?
Cell phones, PDAs
Stereo systems
and speakers
DVDs
Walkman
Sneakers
Laptops
Eye glasses
Apartment buildings
Night clubs, restaurants
Conclusion
• Our conception of Technology has shifted.
• The dimension of High-tech can be found
somewhere at the intersection of two
tendencies: minimalism and complexity.
• Design now a major site of (high-) technology
innovation