| The
following notes will look at how moral,
cultural, environmental and spiritual factors
can affect the decisions that we make, the way
that we work and the way that we use materials
during the course of our design and technology
activities.
(As
large photographs may take a long time to load,
some have been omitted from this description).
You
may also follow the links to
Exercises
in Moral Issues;
Exercises
in Environmental Issues.
1.
Moral Issues
The Collins Concise
Dictionary describes “moral” as being
“concerned with or relating to human behaviour,
especially the distinction between good and bad
or right and wrong behaviour …. based on a
sense of right and wrong according to
conscience”.
So what do moral factors and
morality have to do with people who design and
make things?
The answer is clear. The way
that we design and make things affect the
safety, comfort and well being of people who
come into contact with our designs and who will
be affected by them.
So, the morality of our thinking and
decision making has an impact on every aspect of
our design and technology work and on the people
who will use our products.
Morality: The Design Opportunity
The identification of a problem or design
opportunity offers us a chance to do something
about it. Our
moral choices are that:
- we could do something that would be considered by
others to be good for people, our
environment and living things such as birds,
fish and animals;
- we could do something that would be considered by
others to be bad for people, our environment
and living things such as birds, fish and
animals, or;
- we could decide to do nothing at all.
The moral dilemma is whether
to act when we know that action should be taken
and whether to do what is right and good for
others particularly when it is difficult or not
so good for us.
Morality: The Design Specification
The design specification lists the specific
things that a design should include and the
specific attributes that a design should have.
The morality with which the design
specification is compiled helps determine the
quality, safety and suitability of the design.
So the specification should be compiled
with the aim of creating a product that is right
and good for people and the environment.
Morality: The Design
A design is a detailed plan of a product,
system or environment that takes into account
how the product, system or environment should be
manufactured and how it should be used.
A design may be judged as being a very
good design because the finished product does
precisely what it was intended to do, however,
the way that the product is intended to be used
may be judged as being morally good or bad, or
right or wrong.
Take for example, the design
of land mines.
A land mine is intended to be hidden just
below the surface of the earth and to explode
when a light pressure is applied to the top of
it. The
fact that hidden land mines indiscriminately
blow the legs off unsuspecting adults, children
and animals, questions the morality of all the
people involved with commissioning, designing,
manufacturing, advertising, distributing,
selling and using the product.
So the way that a design is
intended to be used is a factor in determining
whether the designer’s actions are morally
good or bad, or morally right or wrong.
The morality of the designer’s decision
making, together with the designer’s practical
skills determines how much the world will
benefit from the design.
Morally, designs intended
for the general public, should be inclusive,
i.e. designed in a way that everyone can use the
finished product, system or environment
comfortably and safely.
New designs for public facilities such as
public telephones, public parks and public
buildings are generally inclusive designs aimed
at giving everyone equal access to them, around
them and exit from them. However,
even inclusive designs cannot cater for every
conceivable need that individuals that make up
“the general public” can have, so designs
have to be modified, customised and redesigned
to meet the specific and special needs of
individuals.
Ideally, a design should be
a good solution to a problem or a design
opportunity and should benefit humans, plants,
animals or the environment, with minimal or no
detrimental affects.
All designs should take into account the
health, safety and well being of the makers and
users of the design.
Morality: The Choice of Manufacturing Materials
At this time of dwindling natural resources, it
might be argued that people have a moral duty to
use the world’s remaining resources carefully
and wisely.
The choices we make about manufacturing
materials has implications for the world’s
remaining resources and the energy and materials
that are needed to convert raw materials into
the processed materials that we use to make
things.
Not all resistant materials
come from the earth.
Some materials used for making products
come from animals.
Animals such as sheep and cattle are
killed for food and their skins are used to make
leather products.
Some wild animals are bred in captivity
simply to be killed for their skins.
The skins of mink, foxes and countless
other wild animals are used to make coats, bags
and trophies.
Their bones are sometimes used for carved
products, knife handles and “medicinal”
potions. Many
ordinary people as well as groups concerned with
the welfare of animals consider this sort of
behaviour by humans to be immoral.
Morality: Recycling Materials
We are using or destroying some resources
faster than they can be replaced.
In some cases, they cannot be replaced.
Finite resources such as coal and oil may
run out if they are depleted at the present
levels. In an effort to conserve
resources and to reduce the environmental impact
of the primary conversion of the raw materials
that are used to make resistant materials such
as metals, wood, plastics and glass, there is a
move towards recycling materials from redundant
products. That
means that products that are no longer used are
taken apart and their parts are melted or
processed in some other way to make new
materials that can be used to make products. The
energy used in recycling processes is usually
far less than that used in the primary
conversion of materials.
It could be argued that morally, the
recycling of materials is better than the
depletion of finite resources.
Morality: The Use Of Energy
Energy is essential for industry, for
development and for a comfortable human
existence. The
world’s use of fossil fuels, i.e. coal, oil
and natural gas has contributed to higher levels
of greenhouses gases, global warming and a
depletion of these natural fossil fuel
resources. Our
use of nuclear energy poses the possibility of
catastrophic environmental disaster through
accidental radioactive spillages, leaks,
explosions, terrorist attacks and through
inappropriate storage and dumping of nuclear
waste.
The effects of energy use
have global consequences.
One of the fears is that global warming
will trigger occurrences that will add more
greenhouse gases to our atmosphere and will
exacerbate the problem of global warming.
Some people believe that the consequences
of our energy use are a greater threat to the
safety of the human race than the threat of
nuclear war.
Many countries of the world
are debating how to reduce our dependency on
fossil fuels and how to produce clean, safe
energy in the future. Researchers are trying to
identify new, clean and renewable sources of
energy whilst designers are trying to design
products that use less energy.
The dilemma, as always, is how to
minimise the environmental impact of our efforts
to harness energy from the available sources.
The moral thing for all of us to do is to reduce
our own consumption of energy.
Three easy ways that we can
do this are to:
- insulate our homes and places of work so that less
energy is needed to heat them;
- switch off electrical devices such as computers
and lamps when they are not being used;
- separate waste materials for recycling, (far less
energy is used in recycling processes than
in the primary conversion of raw materials).
Morality: The Manufacturing Processes
The moral issues relating to manufacturing
process are to do with:
-
how
the polluting effects of the manufacturing
process are prevented, or at least limited;
-
the
safety of the manufacturing processes for
the people operating the tools and
machinery;
-
the
conditions of work of the people operating
the tools and machinery;
-
the
age of the workers, (particularly relating
to the use of child labour);
-
how
materials are used so as to minimise waste;
-
how
well the product components are made and
assembled;
-
how
waste materials are disposed of.
Morality: Choice of Manufacturer
These days, many large businesses either move
from place to place, country to country,
wherever the labour force and premises costs are
cheapest or they “out- source” the work to
manufacturers anywhere in the world where the
costs are the lowest.
As two of the most significant costs for
any business are labour costs and premises
costs, the out-sourcing of work to industrially
developing countries makes economic sense to
businesses.
However the consequences of factory
closures and people being made redundant on the
grounds that products can be produced cheaper in
another part of the world, is morally
questionable.
Morality: Quality
The quality of products must be suitable for
their intended purpose. For example, a
manufacturer of alloy wheels for high
performance cars (incidentally, production of
the wheels was out-sourced to a Central European
country) found tiny faults in some of its wheels
that could result in the wheels breaking up at
high speeds.
The moral dilemma that the manufacturer
faced was whether to admit to the fault and to
recall all the wheels, to inspect them and to
replace all the faulty ones.
The quality of products is
fundamental to the safety of the people using
the product and to those who may be affected by
the use of the product.
Imagine the consequences of a car’s
wheels breaking up at high speed on a busy
motorway, or the consequences of poor quality
smoke alarms, poor quality climbing ropes and
poor quality electrical goods.
The BSI kite mark and other standards
symbols indicate that the product conforms to
the standards set by the organisation
represented by the symbol.
Morality: Health and Safety
Safety is fundamental to the design of products, systems and
environments.
A designer’s decisions will greatly affect the
risks faced by the manufacturers and users of
products, systems and environments.
The
competent designer will know
what the potential hazards will be during
construction, use, maintenance, cleaning and
dismantling of a design and how to eliminate
them. Designers
need to consider the conditions where a design
will be used and the people who will use it. The
designer’s duties are to eliminate hazards
where feasible and where hazards cannot be
eliminated, to reduce the risks as far as is
reasonably practicable and to provide
information about remaining risks to health and
safety.
During all phases of
design, production, storage, marketing,
distribution and use of products, the hazards
should be identified, risks assessments should
be recorded and action should be taken to reduce
or eliminate the risks to people’s health and
safety.
Systems for maintaining
the health and safety of people carrying out
D&T activities include:
- safety
rules and defined procedures;
- hazard
warnings and instructions;
- safe storage of materials;
- ensuring that tools are safe to use;
- safe
working practices;
- safe
working area.
Morality: Transport
Products should be transported safely and in a
way that ensures that they will not be damaged
in transit and that people, wildlife and the
environment will not damaged by the
transportation process.
Morality: Sales
In the world of business and industry, products
are made to be sold for a profit. The sale of
products is an essential part of commercial
designing and manufacturing.
For the sales process to be moral, it
must be a process that informs potential buyers
of the true nature of the product being
described.
Morality: After Sales
The guarantees given by the product
manufacturer and the after sales care and
support given to the customer affects the
customer’s well being and trust in the
manufacturer.
2.
Cultural Issues
This section will describe
what is meant by culture and how peoples’
culture influences the design and technology of
products and the environments that people live
and work in.
Culture
Culture relates to the ideas and activities
of groups of people and civilisations.
It is about the way that people behave
and relate to one another.
It is about the way that people live,
work and spend their leisure time.
It is about people’s beliefs and
aspirations.
Cultural Evidence
Throughout the ages, people have left
evidence of their culture in their writing,
their artwork, in their technological
achievements and in the way that they shaped
their environments. This evidence can be seen in
museums such as the Museum of Mankind in London
and at historic sites around the world such as
The Pyramids in Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru,
Stonehenge in England and the rock art and giant
stone figures of Easter Island.
Machu Picchu in
Peru. Photograph courtesy of Marie Fuggle
Cultural
Diversity
It is clear that even in small geographical
areas, people lived in different ways and had
different beliefs at various times in history.
Taken on a global scale, there have been thousands
of communities, each with their own distinct
cultures.
Peruvian women with
their llamas. Photograph courtesy of Marie
Fuggle
Cultural
diversity is the difference in the cultures of
groups of people. Cultural diversity can relate to
the differences in peoples’ language, to their
music, to their artwork, to their attitudes, to
the way they do things and to the way that people
treat each other.
When cultures have a shared attitude
towards human rights, animal rights and to the use
of our environment, cultural diversity enriches
our world and should be celebrated.
However, cultural differences can also
breed conflict.
Conflicts can arise out of a belief that a
group or race of people are superior to others,
that they have
more rights than others, that one sex is superior
to another, that one religion is more important
than others, etc.
Some of these conflicts can be witnessed on
the television news channels every day.
From a design and technological point of
view, conflicts have left us a heritage of
castles, fortresses and weapons of every kind.
Conflicts have created the conditions for
innovation in armaments, communication, defence,
land transport, flight, shipping, submarines etc.
Through innovation comes change, and
through change comes changes in culture.
Cultural Change
Cultures may change with time, particularly
with the influences of new ideas, new technologies
and the availability, or scarcity of resources.
In a rapidly changing world, cultures can
change to the point of being lost altogether.
Traditional skills and trades are lost
because technology changes and old technologies
are no longer needed.
Traditional forms of dress change with the
influence of new materials, fashion, mass
production techniques and the globalisation of
manufacturing industries.
Traditional housing has changed due to the
use of new building materials and our demand for
convenient forms of heating, lighting, water and
waste disposal systems etc.
Further changes in building design are
currently taking place because of our need to
conserve energy. |
|
Peruvian
farm implements.
Photograph courtesy of Marie Fuggle |
The
international nature of designers’ work makes it
possible to see similar products and building
designs all over the world.
Marketing strategies by companies such as
Coca Cola has ensured that there are outlets for
their products all over the world and satellite
television has given people access to television
programmes from all over the world.
The big brand names in fashion, fast foods,
drinks, supermarkets, DIY stores, cars and
motorbikes can be seen in many parts of the world
and with their desire to tap into new markets,
their influence is likely to create cultural
change in even more parts of the world.
Cultural Identity
With this convergence of designs has also
developed a desire to preserve cultural identity,
traditions and language.
This has manifested itself in the
re-emergence of traditional forms of dress, e.g.
Tyrolean, where once they might have been
abandoned, traditional looking buildings using
modern materials and build techniques and
activities that are considered (at least by some)
to be part of a group’s or nation’s identity.
|
