Whether we’re conscious of it or not, the things we design can design us as well. “We become what we behold,” as the old proverb goes. Such is the power, explains Jason Silva, of ontological design.

- Directed/Produced by Jonathan Fowler, Elizabeth Rodd, and Dillon Fitton

Jason Silva: 

I’ve recently become obsessed with the role that design plays in the construction of our mindware and the construction of our sense of self. And I remember I was in Cape Town giving a keynote for IBM and this guy that I met called Mahool, a computer scientist, brilliant guy who was a fan of my web series Shots of Awe, showed up for this talk. And we ended up connecting and going and hanging out and spending the day walking around the botanical gardens of Cape Town in the middle of a storm on this bridge that went over the canopy of trees. It was a total kind of — you couldn’t ask for a better stage for a sort of cerebral conversation. And I was talking to him about my desire to steer awareness. Again, how do I transcend to what Michael Pollan calls the been theres and done thats of the adult mind. How do I elicit a childlike sense of wonder? How do I control and steer subjectivity? My obsession. And so he said, “Oh, that’s easy. You know we do that all the time with design. It’s called ontological design.” I was like, “What? Onto, what? Tell me again. Ontological design.”

And I was like, “What does that mean?” Well it has to do with the nature of beingness itself, ontology, what it is to be, what it is to inhabit a mind world, a life world, a worldhood. And basically the idea of ontological design is very simple. It basically says that design affects us in a way that is much more pervasive than we’re normally privy to. The notion is that whether we’re conscious of it or not everything that we design is designing us back. We are being actively designed by that which we have designed. This, of course, echoes Terence McKenna’s idea that we become what we behold. Or Marshall McLuhan’s notion that first we build the tools, but then they build us, you know. Or Steven Johnson when he says our thoughts shape our spaces, you know. We build cathedrals; we build architectural dwellings and then those spaces return the favor. Those spaces build our thoughts. Our thoughts build our spaces; the spaces return the favor. So my friend was talking about this notion that ontological design implies that there’s this hermeneutic circle in the sense of mind emerges into feedback loops between brains, tools, and environments. There’s a meaning-making circle. The self emerges like the ouroboros, like the dragon that’s eating its own tail, right. Or like Escher’s hands where you have the hand that is drawing the hand that is drawing it. So it’s like this infinity loop.