STICKS: The Origins of Design? Chopsticks: Chop Sticks from simple to complex, all designed to enhance the value of “just a stick.” We value the simple wood ones least, and think of the pearl inlaid ones as “expensive.” The orange plastic device allows people who haven’t developed the skill to use chopsticks. The transformation of a stick to a tool is the act of using it as a tool, not its shape; color, texture or any of the other attributes designers can give it. Presenting innocent found sticks as workable, usable tools with appropriate instructions and warnings also points up the complicated social process of transformation that takes place once a “stick” becomes a valued object worth far beyond its natural found state. Chopsticks were probably “just sticks” until someone picks them up and used them as a tool. Chimpanzees, crows and other animals use sticks as tools, but do they impart special values and powers to the sticks the way we do? So just using a stick as a tool is not a rare occurrence, it is the special things that humans do to sticks that makes them valuable: our ability to DECORATE and MODIFY the stick is what […]
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