Engineering

"(About Amazon's plan to automate 75% of its operations) It’s insane to think that a human will pack and ship boxes in ten years — it’s game over folks."

"AI and robots will replace all jobs."

"Where you have machines, then you get certain kinds of problems; where you get certain kinds of problems, then you find a heart warped by these problems. Where you get a heart warped, its purity and simplicity are disturbed. When purity and simplicity are disturbed, then the spirit is alarmed and an alarmed spirit is no place for the Tao to dwell. It isn't that I don't know of these machines, but I would be ashamed to use one."

"If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, [...]; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves."

"As the bourgeoisie, by means of its capital, completely monopolizes all new inventions, every new machine, instead of shortening the hours of labor and enhancing the prosperity and happiness of all, causes, on the contrary, dismissal from employment for some, reduction of wages for others and an increased and intensified state of misery for the entire proletariat."

"There’s going to be more free time. If you believe the premise that humans are social animals, they’re going to have to do something. They can’t just sit at home, so they’ll go to music, they’ll go to sports and they’ll go to my live event."

"Besides black art, there is nothing left in the United States but automation and mechanization."

"If you eventually get a society where you only have to work three days a week, that’s probably OK. If you free up human labor, you can help elder people better, have smaller class sizes – you know, the demand for labor to do good things is still there. And then if you ever get beyond that, you have a lot of leisure time and you’ll have to figure out what to do with it."

"In the short term, AI will destroy a lot of jobs. In In the long term, like every other technological revolution, I assume we will figure out completely new things to do."

"Anything that can be automatically done for you can be automatically done to you."

"It has been well observed that the world, more especially the English portion of it, during the last half century, has been in its working dress; that is to say, although we have done some very wonderful things in the way of mechanics, and have produced other things which are marvels of cheapness, yet as regards the production of really beautiful objects, particularly those required in every-day life, we have been behind most other epochs of civilization. Of course there is no prima facie reason why cheap things should be ugly, for a die or mould of a good design costs no more than a bad one; but still the fact remains that the objects in use in every-day life are not beautiful, and it is to effect a change in this respect that the Government have established Schools of Design and the excellent Museum of which I shall have to speak hereafter. Great praise must also be given to the Society of Arts for beginning the movement and carrying it on to the present time; and although the sphere of its action must necessarily be infinitely smaller than that of the Government Schools, yet we should always remember that the initiative of our great English exhibitions of industry came from the Society, and that it is to those exhibitions that we owe the stirring among the dry bones of industrial art which is now taking place."

"Industrial design had its origins in the Industrial Revolution, when factory production began to supplant craft production of housewares, textiles, tools, and other consumer goods."

"If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever."

"Industrial design is a big industry, so there are always new businesses opening up that have really exciting opportunities."

"Manufacturers are realizing that good industrial design is an important ingredient in their products' success and a vital factor in industrial competitiveness in both domestic and international markets."

"What Charles and Ray Eames are to furniture design, Raymond Loewy is to industrial design—the modern master"

"If there is a designer whose name is synonymous with industrial design it is Raymond Loewy (1893-1986)."

"There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others who don’t care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today. Industrial design, by concocting the tawdry idiocies hawked by advertisers, comes a close second. Never before in history have grown men sat down and seriously designed electric hairbrushes, rhinestone-covered file boxes, and mink carpeting for bathrooms, and then drawn up elaborate plans to make and sell these gadgets to millions of people. Before (in the “good old days”), if a person liked killing people, he had to become a general, purchase a coal mine, or else study nuclear physics. Today, industrial design has put murder on a mass production basis. By designing criminally unsafe automobiles that kill or maim nearly one million people around the world each year, by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breathe, designers have become a dangerous breed."

"A lot of people are open to new things, as long as they look like the old ones."

"Industrial design keeps the customer happy, his client in the black and the designer busy."

""Can we afford industrial design?" "Is the industrial design consultant merely a stylist ?" "Does the employment of a designer tend to raise the standard of design?" These questions leap to the mind. My friend, , Honorary r.d.i., has gone to a great deal of trouble in his answers to these questions..."

"In speaking and thinking of industrial design, care must be taken not to limit its application to the few obvious trades. Industrial design is important to every industry and its value in most hast already been demonstrated."

"A most important element for the consideration of the industrial designer is sales. There is only one reason for hiring an industrial designer, and that is to increase the sales of a product."

"Industrial design is not necessary in the production of goods; but it makes goods more acceptable."

"The industrial designer is found in many fields of industry, which represent a wide diversity of manufactured products. Some of these fields are: Automobiles, airplanes, boats, trains, trailers, trucks; vacuum cleaners, washing machines, toasters, electric fans, lamps; furniture, hardware, electrical equipment; china, glassware, pottery; silverware; garden implements; farm machinery; tools of all kinds;"

"This book is aimed primarily at the young person making his choice of a vocation. It is also designed to give business executives and engineers a clear idea of how the industrial designer operates, what he can do for their business, and how much to expect from him after he has been engaged."

"One of the functions of an industrial designer is to bridge the gap between manufacturer and ultimate buyer."

"Modern industrial design is based on the principle of conspicuous economy [but] the bourgeois culture which dominates the Western World is founded... on the principle of conspicuous waste."

"Modern industrial design has advanced at a rapid pace during the last ten years. Its successes are no longer confined to objects which, like automobiles and airplanes, are themselves the product of new conditions. Modern design has also begun to conquer the traditional arts, and the feeling for abstract form, first expressed in our time in the works of Picasso, Braque, Brancusi, Duchamps-Villon in Europe, or Stieglitz, Benton, and Storrs for example in the United States, has finally entered architecture and the decorative arts."

"In brief the industrial designer is a fashion designer of industrial products and is called upon by industry and manufacturers to "style" their products or to "streamline" them."

"The designer of today, in most branches of art and particularly in the field of industrial design, needs more than vision and inspiration. This can be seen easily by anyone who will trouble himself to analyze the motif of some costly production and consider its chance to endure on the basis of artistic worth, rather than mere excellence of technical finish."

"As architecture stands for parent design principles and represents some of the world's best examples of composition and design, industrial design should be based upon the best examples of architectural design."

"The course in industrial design is as follows: First year: Free-hand drawing — Drawing in outline from the flat, from groups of geometrical solids, from objects, memory drawing. Industrial design — Geometrical and free-hand designing in flat outline, historical ornament (ancient) . Mechanical drawing — Elementary perspective, practical geometry. Mathematics — Mensuration, ^first year), Euclid, book 1 (one term only). Second year Free-hand drawing — Drawing in light and shade from the flat and model, from groups of geometrical solids, from ornamental casts, from objects, memory drawing. Industrial design — Designing from plant forms in outline (flat), elementary color (flat), historical ornament (medieval). Third year: Free-hand drawing — Continuation of work of second year, drawing in monochrome, memory drawing. Industrial design — Plastic design, historical ornament (modern), history of design, clay modeling. Work in the special courses is intended largely to supplement the work done in the regular course, but it is of a much more practical nature."

"There are many branches of manufacturing industry which greatly depend for their success upon the designer's art, and it is necessary that the industrial designer should possess a knowledge of the processes of the manufacture in which his designs will be utilized, as well as of the properties and capabilities of the material to which they will be applied."

"The subject of industrial design is one of three important practical co-related subjects which should be taught in public schools, and to which practice and skill in drawing should be applied. Satisfactory results in this subject, however, depend entirely upon the manner in which it is taught. Instruction in industrial design means a clear presentation of the principles which obtain in the construction and harmonious arrangement of geometric form for decorative purposes, the proper use of plant forms in ornamental arrangements, and the principles of good taste to be found in the great history styles of art."

"The only way of reaping a harvest of good industrial design is by sowing the seed of good Art."

"Our industrial design is very bad still — a great deal of it — though infinitely better than it was thirty years ago. So a great deal of our teaching of design may be, I fear is, unsound; but all the sound teaching we have is through such schools as this, and even in our errors there is, let us hope, instruction."

"This question of industrial design is nearly distinct from the general Art education of the public, the former being very much a manufacturers' undertaking, while the other, being of the first importance, appeals to the community at large for sympathy and support."

"The plan of the books is the first systematic effort made in this country to cover the whole field of Art Education for schools, by embracing every subject included under the head of Elementary Drawing. Pupils going through the course in all the subjects will be thoroughly grounded, and prepared either for practical industrial art or the further professional study of the fine arts."

"At the suggestion of the publishers, this work was undertaken to form one of their series of Dictionaries and Cyclopeadias. In this view, it has been the intention to make it a complete course of instruction and book of reference to the mechanic, architect and engineer. It has not, therefore, been confined to the explanation and illustration of the methods of projection, and the delineation of objects which might serve as copies to the draughtsman, matters of essential importance for the correct and intelligible representation of every form; but it contains the means of determining the amount and direction of strains to which different parts of a machine or structure may be subjected, and the rules for disposing and proportioning of the material employed, to the safe and permanent resistance of those strains, with practical applications of the same."

"Let us, then, take care of that art which is intended to penetrate into the houses of the lowly. In doing this we may rest assured, that that which is intended to embrace a more exalted position will not be forgotten. Let us not lose tight of the sentiment to nobly expressed by the poet — blind yet bold — when he says:—"

"In treating the subject a purpose has been kept in view, viz., to try to explain the principles involved in certain methods employed for the production of ornament, and this in order to guide the industrial designer to sure and certain results. To be successful the processes involved in the production of articles of manufacture must be understood, and to this the earnest attention of all interested in the improvement of manufacture should be directed. The abstract teaching of design is comparatively valueless, and success will only be achieved when to the taste of the designer the skill of the workman is united."

"The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have hoped, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of the country far more than the most splendid victories of successful war."

"The study of Industrial Design is really as indispensably necessary as the ordinary rudiments of learning. It ought to form an essential feature in the education of young persons for whatever profession or employment they may intend to select, as the great business of their lives; for without a knowledge of drawing, no scientific work, whether relating to Mechanics, Agriculture, or Manufactures, can be advantageously studied."

"INDUSTRIAL DESIGN is destined to become a universal language ; for in our material age of rapid transition, from abstract, to applied, Science — in the midst of our extraordinary tendency towards the perfection of the means of conversion, or manufacturing production — it must soon pass current in every land."

"Fine Art then, records by idealised imitation the glorious works of good men, whilst it holds those of bad men up to our abhorrence — it gives to posterity their images, either on the tinted canvass or the sculptured marble — it imitates the beautiful effects of nature as seen in the glowing landscape or the rising storm, and perpetuates the appearance of those beauteous gems of the seasons — flowers and fruits, which, though fading whilst the painter catches their tints, yet live after decay by and through his genius. Industrial Art, on the contrary, aims at the embellishment of the works of man, by and through that power which is given to the artist for the investigation of the beautiful in nature; and in transferring it to the loom, the printing machine, the potter's wheel, or the metal worker's mould, he reproduces nature in a new form, adapting it to his purpose by an intelligence arising out of his knowledge as an artist and as a workman. In short, the adaptation of the natural type to a new material compels him to reproduce, almost create, as well as imitate — invent as well as copy — design as well as draw!"

"Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and, we may now say, London, together with many other cities in which periodical Exhibitions of Industrial Art take place, have not, as yet, any appropriate edifice - for these Exhibitions, but some temporary erection or already - existing building is fitted up for the purpose. When the multitude of productions as impose the necessity of an especial erection, it has been necessarily attended with great expense, which is the more objectionable since it is destined to be removed after a very brief existence. The King of Bavaria has been the first to see the necessity of an edifice constructed solely for Exhibitions of Industrial Art, and has, accordingly, caused to be erected a suitable building, of which we are enable to present an engraving. It was inaugurated on the 25th of last August, the King's birthday."

"It appears that all the students who enter the school commence as if they were intended for artists in the higher sense of the word, and are not expected to decide as to whether they will devote themselves to the Fine Arts or to Industrial Design, until after they have completed their exercises in the drawing and painting of the figure from the antique and from the living model. It is for this reason, and from the fact that artists for industrial purposes are both well-paid and highly considered (as being well-instructed men), that so many individuals in France engage themselves in both pursuits."

"Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself."

"In a very real way, designers create the human environment; they make the things we use, the places we live and work, our modes of communication and mobility. Simply put, design matters. And at a moment in our history in which the scientific community has issued serious warnings about the negative impacts of our flawed designs-from global warming and water pollution to the loss of biodiversity and natural resources-designers have a critical role to play in the creation of a more just, healthful and sustainable world."