The design exhibition at V&A museum in London includes a wide range of industries to reveal directions for near future innovation. The content of the exhibition is presented in four areas: Self, Public, Planet, and After Life.
Exhibition brings together technological break through products of recent years together with new innovation.
The first theme Self is about boundaries of humans and technology, and how they will merge together in the future.
One of the examples is about use of technology in genetic profiling. We can already determine a profile based on criminal’s DNA , but how ethical is racial and gender profiling.
The second part called Public is questioning democracy, and whether it still works.
The example is about fake news during a Brexit campaign. Vote Leave campaign distributed 4.2 million leaflets claiming it was an official view of the NHS (National Health Service) to support Brexit.
The exhibition has a heavy emphasis on the role of technology. There are familiar examples of using technology in the city and transportation context e.g. self-driving cars.
Uber uses algorithm to connect drivers to passengers and sets the fares and rates.
Uber Eats assigns jobs to couriers via smartphones. In this way the digital managements removes the human contact between drivers and employer.
It is a direction towards removing humans and replacing them with robots.
The third part Planet is possibly the most interesting for someone, who is already quite familiar with product development. It explains the planetary scale of innovation by asking should the planet be a design project. It shows the real power and impact of design in a large scale.
Examples include mini satellites and SatNOGs which are open DIY systems that allow anyone to observe and communicate with low orbiting satellites. One is currently on the roof V&A.
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