It is a kettle in white plastic. Being old and well-used, the plastic is grimy everywhere except around the handle. When I open the lid I see that the heating element is coated in limescale and there are chalky scabs floating in the water at the bottom. Looking at it like this, in one superficial drag, is mildly unpleasant. The materials look cheap, the design mean. At this point I don’t have much idea of how the thing works and if a part of it were to break I wouldn’t know how to repair it. I realise, as I probe my mental image of the kettle, that I wouldn’t have the inclination either. I harbour a degree of antipathy towards it, as though the kettle is being deliberately offensive. The shoddiness of the design has somehow personified the product. It is a sort of synecdoche for “Technology” – Robert Persig’s impersonal “death force” that transfixes people and gives rise to ill-conceived machines that rule over humanity [1]. And this thing is in my house! A mysterious object and consequently hostile.
But there is an alternative way to look at a kettle. With a little effort I can view the object in terms of its function. What is it for? What does it represent? We all know that an electric kettle is a water heater. There is a resistive element in the base that can be connected to the mains electricity supply. As current is drawn through this element it heats up significantly (it has a relatively high electrical resistance) and this heat is transferred to the water by conduction. The kettle appears less threatening from this lofty vantage. It is true to its function and the fact that it is dirty and leaks all over the table top when full are just interesting aspects of this particular kettle. One can always go deeper, of course. I can recall that the plastic casing would probably have been die-cast with molten pellets of polypropylene. Though this makes the kettle difficult to recycle, polypropylene is a remarkably versatile insulating material. There is a crude logic to making it out of plastic. The unsightly accumulation of limescale arrives courtesy of geography. I live in an area with hard water – that is, the water contains minerals like calcium carbonate because it has percolated through layers of chalk or limestone. When the water boils, this calcium carbonate is deposited on adjacent surfaces. It seems the closer I look, the more unique my kettle becomes. Abstract knowledge about the kettle is enhancing its beauty. In Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins talks at length about the aesthetic appreciation that develops hand-in-hand with scientific enquiry. He quotes the Nobel-prizewinning physicist Richard Feynman [2,3]: “I don’t see how studying a flower ever detracts from its beauty. It only adds.”
We have covered two ways of seeing: one is a superficial, aesthetic mode and the other a functional, or abstract mode. Both perspectives are valid and useful because they supply complementary information about the nature of an object – but now I can feel you eyeing your immaculate glass kettle with LED illumination… Fortunately, these ideas also apply outside of the kitchen. I first encountered them while I was working at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Between wrangling oscilloscopes and electromagnetic probes, I was reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and learning how to learn. Initially I found the whole layout of the campus oppressive. I hated the superhuman scale of everything – the glass, the steel, the sham elegance, the anonymity. Later, armed with a way of looking at things in terms of their function, I started to think about why the environment was designed as it was and what exactly was wrong with it.
Psychogeographers will be familiar with these ideas too. A psychogeographer travels around cities and other urban environments in a state of high receptivity – alert to the emotions engendered by buildings and other man-made structures. I think it is difficult to exist in modern cities without an abstract appreciation of your surroundings. How should a sympathetic person respond to the hot press of the London metro system, or the appalling vacuity of an airport shopping arcade? People cope by looking inwards: they listen to music, meticulously track how fast and how far they run, they listen to podcasts. All these activities are admirable in moderation, but eventually they alienate you from the reality of your environment. The author Will Self has often talked about the importance of walking without artificial distraction – he perambulates for miles across London and even to and from airports. In this way he builds a contiguous mental picture of the landscape and his movements within it. Many of us live in miniature worlds connected by disorienting, machine-assisted journeys [3]. We must become involved in where we live so we can discriminate between good and bad design, become less neurotic, more sympathetic and even, perhaps, more political.
References and Further Reading
[1] R. M. Persig. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Corgi, pp. 13, 1981.
[2] R. Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder, Penguin, 2006 .
[3] A. Seckel, Remembering Richard Feynman, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII (4) 1988.
[3] W. Self, Psychogeography. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVEgOiB7Bo8 First Accessed: 1 July 2018
Philip Bradford 