“I'd love to talk with you more, but we have a war.” So wrote an email friend who works for a highly respected strategic forecasting firm. (Photo: Courtesy of Salon.com)
I was taken aback. For a brief moment, I'd forgotten how much of the world is actively at war, at any time. Now, once again, our attention is on the Middle East.
For most of us, the hostilities in the Middle East -- Hamas and Hezbollah vs. Israel, the war of the nationalist/terrorist non-states (of which Israel was one, prior to 1948) -- is merely CNN Headline News fare, with a few screen-size pictures of exploding bombs in Beirut and Haifa. For the people there, especially the civilian non-combattants, it's a horror. Can the experience of war -- the most dramatic expression of human violence and, many would say, evil -- be conveyed to those of us who tacitly tolerate and fund war? Can it be done without the presentation descending to the level of a videogame or a brief interlude between advertisements on TV?
Although conscientious filmmakers have dealt with war from every perspective, so far I have yet to see an interactive experience or environment crafted with the intent of creating the true experience of war. Is it so difficult, so objectionable, or taboo to share with the rest of us what war's victims experience firsthand?
I might add, neither has anyone well interpreted the experience of being within the councils of power where war is a topic of polite conversation and private agendas. Plaudits to the Russian Government for publishing at least the public emanations of the G8 Summit, this year held in St. Petersberg, Russia. But all of the press releases are no more than a curtain, behind which the international Wizards of Oz secretly huddle.
Power as an experience remains purposely elusive and difficult to share.
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior (economics), optimizing interactions (design) and facilitating conversations (markets), are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a 'nice to have'‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
