Aaron, you really hit my interests with this one. Surprise, I do like other things other than theater! I grew up with a Speech Therapist Mother, so I was always tagging along to see her patients at work. She worked with children, so I would play with them and help with therapy when I could. Reading this really brought out my childish fun playing with those special needs kids.
I found a lot of connections between this reading and the one we read about how aesthetic can relate to function. How the more simplistic the design, the more aesthetically pleasing it can be and, therefore, it will perform its function better. These connections were great to find between the readings because it really brought together the concepts.
Another thing that fascinated me was the conflicting ideas of simplicity vs. universality and their constant struggle to dominate the world of design and engineering. On one hand, it makes sense to have one thing in your pocket that does every task for you. But then it also makes sense to have highly specialized objects that can perform the task perfectly. It’s a matter of prioritization: performance or space? Universal “platforms” may take up less space in your household than four different objects, but they may also perform the functions worse than the individual objects.
The reading also brought up the culture around disabilities and the progress that humanity seems to be undergoing in regards to such. For example, I didn’t even thin about having to wear glasses as a disability. But it is part of my identity and it’s true, I do look forward to getting new glasses every once in a while. But when I was younger (I got glasses when I was six) it was something I was shamed and ridiculed for. It’s incredible to see how far we’ve come in just the past decade. From bullying a child for wanting to see properly, to selling glasses with fake lenses. I hope this progress continues with the more apparent disabilities. And such, as this progress happens, how does the connotation of the disabilities change? I hope there will be less shame around the culture regarding them, but as for now, it’s already apparent that there’s been extreme progression towards acceptance.
I could probably write 2000 words on this reading about my thoughts and where my mind went while I read it, but I’ll stop here for your sake. I might even send the pdf to my mom!