I begin with My everyday life first, because I think at the beginning of my thesis project, however it may turn up, I owe it to myself to document the headspace I am consciously creating through a lifestyle to give justice to this project. This is important to establish since my last self-driven long-term project, despite one of my best shots could have done more than I let it. Hence, there are certain risks I am more willing to take, challenges Iā€™m more open towards (including studying philosophy because I can get all philosophical, but design calls for storytelling) and hereā€™s how it works in my head :

In the first year I learnt and still continue to realize is how stories are effective because they capture the essence of time. I now, at the end of 3.5 years of design, something I see myself fascinated with for life, recognize that taking the real problems of the world and imagining for them demand dedication, and sources of active AND regular intervals of inspiration. And Simran, where is the time to do it more actively is not an excuse. I sound aggressive back there but itā€™s just a general regard I gained for time and the reaps and benefits of regularity having read Time Travel and from my failed experiences. Why is this relevant?

Well for one, since the book, I mentally played a game where in while I questioned stuff through the day, I would compare my understanding of the problem over time. We probably do it anyway, I know, but doing it consciously was a very insightful period. This became relevant to my everyday tasks, assessing their meaning over time and setting my own time-compass straight, using my time everywhere more consciously while wondering. Time travel also brought me to ponder how the present is the past as we speak yet the future isnā€™t our present as quick perceived in the same manner. And another, I signed up for Deconstructing Algorithms after a lot of reflection and positionality driven thoughts last semester where right now, to be sure of what I want to do in the future, to where I would position myself, I need to give my best right now, for all my dreams that motivate me, in the present.

The brief for the project presented the notion of deconstruction and the expansive presence of algorithms in everyday lives shaping decisions, behaviours and cultures. At one end, the machines demand an objective outlook to the methodologies followed while constructing algorithms; while at the other we deal with the consequences of their omnipresence shaping so many experiences all at once, which makes the objective problem tougher than it is with rising exceptions to fulfil. Both pressing problems at either end, I did not feel quite sure how to navigate through the brief so I referred to the resources listed to us. My naive understanding of deconstruction, through the first week had me see how deconstruction is actually how we learn more from what we already know. But also for carrying out everyday conversations, I noted how sarcasm or rhetoric statements humorize situations because of a dual meaning in the sentence. Deconstruction! We diffused arguments in the house that would be clarification questions by saying ā€˜Deconstructionā€™ to one another, because we were, in our heads, trying to make sense of something only heard once, played in our heads differently to not be on the same shared understanding.

Reading about Derrida, I learnt that his dilemma exists to account for a structure to the evolution of meaning for words under language. In some sense, he was rigid in his way of considering meaning in language to be guided by facts (dates, timestamps etc) possibly because he was against the French govt of discriminating Jews. He thrashes the story of looking at words as signifier (the word, label itself) and signified (the intended, contextual meaning to be conveyed). He does so by arguing that meaning does not exist within the word itself, but outside of it and around it. A little like this:

Derrida describes this with an ā€˜eventā€™ where language was discovered. When suddenly the word ā€˜meaningā€™ was discovered, that meant every word had one, giving rise to the system of language.

Contrastingly, in structuralism, something emerges from between 2 things, a difference between two-fields. It doesnā€™t derive from a single cause from an effect, it emerges as a difference between a field.

Rupture! Event!

Derridas arguments are always towards understanding the relationship between two words when a new word is born; which is causative of the other? Case in point- language. The moment they realised the word ā€˜meaningā€™, language was born and suddenly everything had meaning. Bringing him to the age-old philosophical question : Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

Simran Singh

17 January 2020