A contribution by Eric Hunting:

“We are discussing a chess game with an extremely large number of different pieces. There are no artifacts or systems which have only one possible design and the nature of this design determines the fabrication methods and thus the potential minimum of scale of production facility and the nature of the infrastructure that is needed to support it. Design and fabrication method are interdependent. Design limits the range of possible fabrication method. Fabrication method limits the range of possible design. When a product concept is completely new and there is no established production facilities for it. design leads fabrication. When a product is an incremental improvement of existing products with an existing investment in production facilities and infrastructure or when other logistics limit fabrication method options (like choosing to minimize facility scale and production overhead), fabrication leads design. In the pathology of product development you eventually realize a reconciliation between these two sides determined by cost and competition -how much a company is willing to invest in new production capability, and hence novelty in design, for an edge in market share. By extension, fabrication method determined the logistics of production which, in turn, influences the architecture of an overall industrial infrastructure. However, where that infrastructure is already established in some form, it feeds back on production logistics in the manner of ‘cost effectiveness’ or ‘practicality’, which ultimately trickles up into limitations upon design. Thus we arrive at the cybernetics (in the classical sense) of an industrial infrastructure. Design can thus influence an overall industrial infrastructure, or it limits can be dictated by it.

When we say that a technology has the potential to ‘leapfrog’ what we are really saying is that a particular design has so simplified the logistics of production or deployment that it precludes the need for some aspects of the traditional Industrial Age Infrastructure. That this potential should seem providential is understandable because we don’t usually think about the relativity of design to infrastructure. Using everyone’s favorite model of the cell phone, it’s easy to point to why it works in a developing world context -but try and explain how it happened to come to have that ability and the story gets complicated because western people didn’t go wireless for the same reasons the rest of the world does. We tend to think of design in terms of functionality or aesthetics -it’s either ergonomically optimal or its decorative. We take for granted that there is this supply of stuff and means to transport it and don’t even think very deeply about the limitations they, by their subtle nature, may impose upon design through the forces of cost-effectiveness. Industrial designers don’t sit at their desk and think; “If only those knuckleheads at Airbus would make a VTOL flying truck that cost $100k and can go 2000 miles on a tank of propane, I could make a toaster that looks like THIS.” But, in fact, this is exactly the sort of dynamics that are going on underneath the surface of our civilization.

In order to deliberately engineer leapfrogging we need to consider the relationship between design and production logistics with the intent to streamline the latter by virtue of the former. In doing this we must bear in mind that standard of living is not specific to design. Standard of living is a set of functionality which can be potentially accommodated by an infinite variety of very different designs, and thus by extension an infinite variation in the cybernetics of the industrial infrastructure supporting it. We can exploit this fact to our advantage. Why can’t a refrigerator come in parts? Why does a car have to be made with a three storey steel press? These are the kinds of questions one needs to ask.”