This episode of "Shots of Awe" is brought you
by the Toyota Prius.
Let's lead the way.
So, I'm fascinated by the extent to which our environment molds
and shapes us, how what is without, becomes within.
And so I recently discovered this term
called ontological designing, which is essentially
this notion that everything we design is designing us back.
We, we, from inside out, we are designed
by that which we have designed.
So there's this circularity, this meaning making circle,
this hermeneutic circle,
You know, we're like the Ouroboros.
We're like the snake eating its own tail.
We're like Escher's hands.
You know, the hand that's drawing
that hand that is drawing it.
These feedback loops are where mind emerges.
And it turns out that mind, that really subjectivity, who
we are as life beings in the world,
exists in that feedback loop, emerges in that feedback loop.
We learn language but then that language
molds our personalities.
And then our molded personalities
use language to speak out.
And then that which we speak and read in turn changes us.
And there's this circularity.
So Marshall McLuhan used to talk about the role of technology
in this space, in this context.
So we build the tools but then those tools build us.
We build these smartphones and these smartphones change
how we think and they change our behavior.
That's why they used to say that the PC, the computer
was the LSD of the '90s because the computer
revolution literalized the dream of expanding
our minds through the use of our feedback
with these tools and these computers.
Stephen Johnson takes it further.
He talks about architecture.
He says our thoughts shape our spaces.
We design the world.
But those spaces return the favor.
So we build these cathedrals and then
those cathedrals build cathedrals inside our minds
essentially.
We mirror the environment that we create.
So what is our responsibility then,
when we build the cities of the 21st century, the city
planners, the urban designers, how
do we make better systems thinking, better feedback
loops, to kind of like upgrade how we function in the world,
to upgrade mankind and to understand
the city as an organism.
And as Geoffrey West says from the Santa Fe Institute,
cities are like organisms.
Alleys are like capillaries.
And so understanding these feedback loops,
observing these feedback loops, upgrading these feedback loops,
allows us to raise the stage in which we unfold.
And that's why ontological designing is an important idea.