Democratic objects
My friend Anna, a furniture design grad student at RISD, asked me this question: What is a democratic object?
She was riffing on this idea of furniture that is good for the world: good for the environment and good for people who actually need furniture.
A good piece of furniture is democratic. It’s fair and just to everyone involved it its processing and use of it. IKEA was an example that was brought up. Their furniture is cheap to buy, so it’s accessible, and that makes it fair, and makes it democratic. But at the same time we noted that IKEA exploits many of its laborers overseas. Does that counteract their furniture as democratic? The idea of a democratic object was quickly complicated.
I didn’t really have a good reply, but that question has since steeped a bit and I think I am getting somewhere with an idea.
My definition now: a democratic object is one that makes experience more accessible.
A road system is a democratic object. It allows someone to drive anywhere they want, given their capacity of a time, money, energy, and access to a vehicle. The roads connect experiences. They go to Disneyland, the grocery store, and to school. The road itself is an experience: road trips, hitch hiking, and work, if you’re a long-haul driver.
A curb cut is the little ramp that connects a sidewalk to the street. A curb cut is a democratic object because it is was originally a design that enabled people in wheel chairs to freely get around a city. (The history of activism behind this urban design can be read here.) A curb cut allows bikers, skateboarders, and strollers to get around as well. The curb cut allows us to get to class, to cross the street to the bodega, and to pick up mail. It enables access to those experiences.
The public internet is a democratic object. It allows someone to join a niche, watch a film, attend a conference, without the inhibiting cost of travel. It made information about nearly anything more accessible. Virtual reality is also a democratic object. It allows one to travel to the beach for vacation, climb up Everest, and box in a boxing match. It gives access to experiences that otherwise one would not have the means to do.
A democratic object can also be used in a way that is un-democratic. The internet can be used in a specific iteration of social media, founded upon the idea of free-speech “public square” and funded by attention marketing, to inhibit other democratic objects from doing their job. The internet does make information for accessible, but it also can spread information with falsities.
There are other objects which can ride this fine line, often oscillating between the two, or existing as both democratic and un-democratic objects simultaneously. Firearms, the idea of policing, the idea of governance. The objects within this sort of Overton window changes with different political and economic climates.
Democratic objects are not cut-and-dry. I have not thought it fully through. Here are a few more disjointed notes about it:
- Democratic objects connect things together, and allow experiences to flow.
- Democratic objects are more democratic when they actively facilitate access to more experiences.
- The experiences that are connected need to open up to more experience. An object is not democratic if the experience it allows access to ultimately limits or inhibits other experiences.
