[Fwd: interview with Thomas Thwaite]

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

Would it be possible to publish keynote interviews in the GNOME Journal?
what do you think of this one? What alternative GNOME news sites are
there other than Planet GNOME for GNOME related announcements, articles,
etc?

I've struggled to figure out where we should be announcing things like
the DS Call for Participation, accommodation & travel funding
guidelines, etc. If anyone here can help me that would be cool!

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org

--- Begin Message ---

• From: William from Texas <williamfromtexas gmail com>
• To: ds-marketing desktopsummit org
• Subject: interview with Thomas Thwaite
• Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2011 21:02:36 +0200

Hi Everyone

Sorry to have been away for a couple weeks - vacationing with (refreshingly) little internet access. I was able to carry out this exchange with keynote speaker Thomas Thwaite. I think he's done responding with questions (he didn't reply recently), but I think the article would be good to go ahead and post. What do you all think?
 
Cheers, and now I'm back :)

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Thomas Thwaite, designer and technologist, will be a featured keynote speaker at this summer's Desktop Summit 2011, in Berlin.

Set to present on August (DATE), Thomas is perhaps best known through his Toaster Project (http://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-project/). The Toaster Project saw Thomas attempting to build a toaster from raw materials. The project exposes the complexity of seemingly simple and everyday technology, leaving us to wonder how technology will change our lives in the future.

In order to learn more about Thomas, I exchanged some email questions with him:

W: I always admire designers who look to future uses of technology. Who are your heroes? What have they said or done that influenced you?

T: Bloody hell, that's a difficult question! I've not really thought about it before. But here goes (in no particular order):

Alan Turing - I just read a biography of him. He wasn't too concerned with fitting in, stood up to the majority view when he believed it to be wrong, was flawed, committed suicide in a rather poetic way by biting in to an apple dipped in cyanide, and of course changed the world, (kind of helped save the world too), but died before being given the full recognition he deserved. He also attempted to make things from scratch... not only a programmable computer and all that, but he would play around with chemicals to see what he could produce on a desert island...

My Parents - Well, I think 'heroes' is perhaps the wrong word, but I recognise their influence... They're both from rural New Zealand where a sort of practical, DIY, 'she'll be right' ethos prevails, which I think influenced me. Not only that I sometimes catch myself saying something my Dad would say... I guess it's the same for many people!

My friend Dr Patrick - talks sense. David Bowie, combines chilled with spectacular. Um, Stanley Kubrick, Werner Hertzog?

W: We don't really know what title to call you for the event. I'm sticking with technologist at the moment.

T: Yes, I have that problem myself... What am I? Answers I give when asked in the pub or something are: "Errm, a designer, sort of, but I haven't designed anything useful", or "Errm, a designer, but kind of on the fringes of fine art, and science, and technology... a 'speculative designer'' ... I think technologist is suitably vague too. :)

W: Do you have a particular working philosophy?

For a working philosophy, I guess, looking at future technologies involves coming up with kind of weird, intriguing proposals and scenarios - if they're not unexpected then you're not really saying anything new.

I wrote some bullet points for a design magazine recently about what makes me tick...
 * Design is primarily about communication, and it's very good at it. Traditionally the focus of this has been on communicating aspects of commercial products/services to the consumer. I try to use these communication methods, both with audiences and with experts to capture/distil complex ideas in to a proposal or a story or an object, to talk about other things than commercial products/services - large questions about where society is heading.
 * So sustainable design say, can be about selecting environmentally benign materials for a specific product, or it can be about the fact that the global population will hit 10 billion in the next 50 years. One is focussed on micro scales, one on macro scales.
 * The world seems to be getting more complex, and complex problem need to be looked at through multiple lenses -  technology, science, economics, bureaucracies, as well as mythologies, beliefs, trends. Design is good at dealing with complexity.
 * I like the idea that we never experience 'the future'... By the time a futuristic technology becomes widespread, it's been so integrated in to society that it's become mundane. I use the mundane in my work quite a bit... I also try and inject a bit of humour in to things too - it's not a good thing to get too heavy.
 * The general press often confuses me with an artist (basically anything not industrial design and creative seems to be art for them). For a while I was wondering if they were right... but after a bit of thought I have confirmed that I am certainly a designer. Design isn't scared of communicating to audiences, that's what I like about it - the design methods of drawing from many different disciplines, talking to the widest range of people, testing ideas, presenting them visually in whatever media, and so on.

W: What makes you happy about what you do?

T: Well I think kind of trampling across boundaries between disciplines, areas of knowledge and so on, makes me quite happy about what I do. So I can be doing research in to something from a range of directions - browser tabs open for a particular project I'm doing at the moment range through medical prosthetic suppliers, journal articles on the evolution of flying dinosaurs and stress response in childhood, ebay auctions for deer skulls, WW2 gas rattles, and orthopaedic slings etc... and then I'm off to this workshop to mould some fibreglass... So I guess I really like the variety in the work I've found myself doing. It has it's downsides too though!

Thanks a lot Thomas! We look forward to seeing you at the 2011 Desktop Summit in Berlin this August!

(ARTICLE FOOTING - DS LOGO/PRESS TEXT
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