Watch These How-to Videos for Some Inspiration.
The promise of the How It Done video is that it will surprise you. This is evident in this selection of the best technology porn videos of 2018 from design blog Core77 . Each video captures something in your brain: oh, this is how it works! For example, here is a ceramic printing machine:
If you asked me how printed ceramics are made, I could come up with an explanation, but I couldn’t imagine this big sparkling boy. And I like to think that this revelation broadened my horizons.
Not necessarily as a direct metaphor – “if you want to leave your mark, you have to adapt to the shape of your environment” – but as a more subtle reminder that everything around me was created as a result of several processes, most of which I could not guess … if i tried. And so there is every system, every place and every person. And when I interact with any of them, I should think about how intricately they are put together.
My dad does prototyping and production, and he used to entertain me by grabbing a nearby item and puzzling over how it was made. In most cases, the answer was injection molding – he liked to point to the seam on the side of an otherwise radially symmetrical pepper shaker. Sometimes he could only make an educated guess. Just remembering that everything comes from somewhere was an important lesson in itself.
Think of this view of a person: considering the decades they have spent parenting, educating, preparing to do it on their own; indelible traces of upbringing that cannot be eradicated by the most dramatic changes in beliefs and behavior. Wouldn’t that give us a greater understanding of the point of view of others? If every inanimate object has an amazing origin story, how could anyone be less fascinating? And won’t this teach us to value others more, to take into account the traces that we leave on each other? Thinking of everyone as part of each other’s ongoing origin story?
And that’s my philosophical excuse to spend an hour thermoforming luggage.