The Ethos of Design

Put simply, forward movement, the ethos of design, matters, of course, but rarely does such an approach allow us to slow down and let ourselves breathe in ways that may be useful. Elsewhere I have urged readers to consider how Eric Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” spoken as officer Daniel Pantaleo choked him to death, compel us to reflect on the epistemic and political dimensions of breathing.44

“Under these conditions, the individual’s breathing is an observed, an occupied breathing. It is a combat breathing,” Fanon wrote.45 In the breathless race for newer, faster, better technology, what ways of thinking, being, and organizing social life are potentially snuffed out? If design is treated as inherently moving forward, that is, as the solution, have we even agreed upon the problem?

Beyond Code-Switching When people change how they speak or act in order to conform to dominant norms, we call it “code-switching.” And, like other types of codes we have explored in this book, the practice of code-switching is power-laden. Justine Cassell, a professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Human–Computer Interaction Institute, creates educational programs for children and found that avatars using African American Vernacular English lead Black children “to achieve better results in teaching scientific concepts than when the computer spoke in standard English.” But when it came to tutoring the children for class presentations, she explained that “we wanted it [sc. the avatar] to practice with them in ‘proper English.’ Standard American English is still the code of power,46 so we needed to develop an agent that would train them in code switching.”47 This reminds us that whoever defines the standard expression exercises power over everyone else, who is forced to fit in or else risks getting pushed out. But what is the

alternative?