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Honest statement: maybe its because I'm a child of the 80s, and so grew up around media with strong dystopian/cyberpunk styling... But I've always wondered why

by arcanus 10y ago

Honest statement: maybe its because I'm a child of the 80s, and so grew up around media with strong dystopian/cyberpunk styling... But I've always wondered why more tech companies and corporations don't embrace this aesthetic. The buildings are so distinctive and striking that it would result in very strong branding. And while motivated by questionable ethics, we do associate megacorps in fiction with bleeding edge technology and incredible capabilities. It is not as if anyone takes the Google happy colors and 'don't be evil' motto as actually indicative of ethical behavior. Conversely, I don't think an insidious aesthetic would imply 'we are doing bad things' as much as a fun nod to sci-fi high tech.

vtange 10y ago
Apple already kind of does - their new "Mothership" in Cupertino is grand in scale and has a huge curtain wall that goes all the way around the building. I don't know if it's intentional, but in my mind Apple is also "that organization with the eerily clean white interior" in real life. They are also unsurprisingly very secretive in their organization; I've heard their engineers have little idea what other other teams are doing, but it's a rumour http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsceticAesthetic http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsceticAesthetic
Declanomous 10y ago
> It is not as if anyone takes the Google happy colors and 'don't be evil' motto as actually indicative of ethical behavior I ordered a Google Home for my dad for Christmas. It's ridiculous the only color available is white. I'm sure they are trying to avoid the 1984/2001 aesthetic by making it look as cuddly as possible, but they are just trading that for a Brave New World/I, Robot aesthetic. On top of that, it really does look like an air freshener. I was up in the air between a Google Home and an Echo Dot for him, and the color alone would have been enough to sway me to the Dot, but I ordered just a few minutes too late for it to arrive by Christmas. I mean, that white is going to look absolutely awful in such a short time because they put capacitive controls under it. Have you ever seen the palm rests of the White Macbooks? They look like pit stains on the favorite undershirt of a very sweaty man. I wish Google would stop copying the "look at me" aesthetic of Apple. I like where Amazon was going with the Dot. It looks nice enough that nobody is going to complain if they see it, but it blends in well enough that you probably won't see it unless you look for it. Google products aren't the cheapest things, but they don't "waste" enough money on design elements for them to actually stand up as aesthetic objects like Apple products do.
- Kalium 10y ago
  https://store.google.com/product/google_home_base https://store.google.com/product/google_home_base What do you mean by only color available being white?
  - dmoy 10y ago
    Not sure, maybe the top is only white? I dont actually know but I assume that's what GP was talking about.
    - Declanomous 10y ago
      Yeah, definitely talking about the top of the device. I thought that was obvious from context, since the bottom appears to be silver in the photos I've seen, and you only interact with the top of the device.
stcredzero 10y ago
It is not as if anyone takes the Google happy colors and 'don't be evil' motto as actually indicative of ethical behavior. How about, "Evil, it's what we do!" Followed by, "Shush, you're just jealous!"
PavlovsCat 10y ago
> It is not as if anyone takes the Google happy colors and 'don't be evil' motto as actually indicative of ethical behavior. It's also not as if the sterility that was some kind of "opposite"? For me it's certainly closer to a factory floor than to, say, Friedensreich Hundertwasser. > Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. -- E. F. Schumacher [ https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.32106019678082;view=1up;seq=230 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.32106019678082;vi... ]
reneherse 10y ago
It may be that the monolithic edifices that typify so many favorite dystopian worlds don't lend themselves to scaling up or down as an organization grows or contracts. Perhaps only organizations that are immune to market vagaries can handle an architecture that does not respond easily to growth/change. Also, many prefer to lease rather than own, and real estate developers are almost universally conservative and conventional, thus unlikely to underwrite the costs of aesthetically significant architecture. (In my experience it costs at least twice as much to construct things in a way that is outside standard convention.) A mixed example, Apple's new campus is a more friendly-faced monolith, but will be difficult to expand without breaking the trademark purity of its circular geometry. (An aside, at least as shown in photos, that building puts my creative mind to sleep and carries a message of conformity, like any monoculture gone to far.)
WalterBright 10y ago
My dad, who was a historian and business professor, told me once that you could trace the start of the decline of a company when they completed their showcase palace headquarters. The problem is they became focused on the edifice rather than their business.
- ghaff 10y ago
  I wonder how much of that is some sort of reversion to the mean though. I.e. you often don't build a showcase palace headquarters until you've clearly been a great success. Not always of course. Executive ego can't be discounted in some cases. However, to the degree a showcase gets built when a company is riding high and growing, it's not unusual that looking out 5 or 10 years, that company won't be doing so well.
- keeringplastik 10y ago
  Thank you for this little nugget of wisdom! It puts one of my past employers into a relevant context.
- Animats 10y ago
  Drive by Apple's new mothership building in Cupertino, and you'll get that feeling. Latest drone imagery (4K): [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh_9_1FX0Yk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh_9_1FX0Yk
- wu-ikkyu 10y ago
  "Nothing fails like success"
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  The new Salesforce headquarters in S.F. is rather ominous, not only for that company but for the state of the tech boom in general.
m-i-l 10y ago
> I've always wondered why more tech companies and corporations don't embrace this aesthetic The Oracle Corporation's global HQ in Redwood City[0] does look a little like the Bonaventure Hotel[1] referenced in the original article, and has been used as a stand-in for at least one dystopian sci-fi megacorp[2]. [0] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=oracle+headquarters+redwood+city&tbm=isch https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=oracle+headquarters+redwoo... [1] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Bonaventure+Hotel&tbm=isch https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Bonaventure+Hotel&tbm=isch [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_Genisys#Filming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_Genisys#Filming
- nxc18 10y ago
  I always liked those buildings. I thought it was an interesting coincidence that their HQ looks exactly like the stereotypical database icon: https://www.google.com/search?q=database+logo https://www.google.com/search?q=database+logo
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

by arcanus 10y ago

vtange 10y ago

Apple already kind of does - their new "Mothership" in Cupertino is grand in scale and has a huge curtain wall that goes all the way around the building. I don't know if it's intentional, but in my mind Apple is also "that organization with the eerily clean white interior" in real life. They are also unsurprisingly very secretive in their organization; I've heard their engineers have little idea what other other teams are doing, but it's a rumour http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsceticAesthetic http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsceticAesthetic

Declanomous 10y ago

> It is not as if anyone takes the Google happy colors and 'don't be evil' motto as actually indicative of ethical behavior I ordered a Google Home for my dad for Christmas. It's ridiculous the only color available is white. I'm sure they are trying to avoid the 1984/2001 aesthetic by making it look as cuddly as possible, but they are just trading that for a Brave New World/I, Robot aesthetic. On top of that, it really does look like an air freshener. I was up in the air between a Google Home and an Echo Dot for him, and the color alone would have been enough to sway me to the Dot, but I ordered just a few minutes too late for it to arrive by Christmas. I mean, that white is going to look absolutely awful in such a short time because they put capacitive controls under it. Have you ever seen the palm rests of the White Macbooks? They look like pit stains on the favorite undershirt of a very sweaty man. I wish Google would stop copying the "look at me" aesthetic of Apple. I like where Amazon was going with the Dot. It looks nice enough that nobody is going to complain if they see it, but it blends in well enough that you probably won't see it unless you look for it. Google products aren't the cheapest things, but they don't "waste" enough money on design elements for them to actually stand up as aesthetic objects like Apple products do.

Kalium 10y ago
https://store.google.com/product/google_home_base https://store.google.com/product/google_home_base What do you mean by only color available being white?
- dmoy 10y ago
  Not sure, maybe the top is only white? I dont actually know but I assume that's what GP was talking about.
  - Declanomous 10y ago
    Yeah, definitely talking about the top of the device. I thought that was obvious from context, since the bottom appears to be silver in the photos I've seen, and you only interact with the top of the device.

stcredzero 10y ago

It is not as if anyone takes the Google happy colors and 'don't be evil' motto as actually indicative of ethical behavior. How about, "Evil, it's what we do!" Followed by, "Shush, you're just jealous!"

PavlovsCat 10y ago

> It is not as if anyone takes the Google happy colors and 'don't be evil' motto as actually indicative of ethical behavior. It's also not as if the sterility that was some kind of "opposite"? For me it's certainly closer to a factory floor than to, say, Friedensreich Hundertwasser. > Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. -- E. F. Schumacher [ https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.32106019678082;view=1up;seq=230 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.32106019678082;vi... ]

reneherse 10y ago

It may be that the monolithic edifices that typify so many favorite dystopian worlds don't lend themselves to scaling up or down as an organization grows or contracts. Perhaps only organizations that are immune to market vagaries can handle an architecture that does not respond easily to growth/change. Also, many prefer to lease rather than own, and real estate developers are almost universally conservative and conventional, thus unlikely to underwrite the costs of aesthetically significant architecture. (In my experience it costs at least twice as much to construct things in a way that is outside standard convention.) A mixed example, Apple's new campus is a more friendly-faced monolith, but will be difficult to expand without breaking the trademark purity of its circular geometry. (An aside, at least as shown in photos, that building puts my creative mind to sleep and carries a message of conformity, like any monoculture gone to far.)

WalterBright 10y ago

My dad, who was a historian and business professor, told me once that you could trace the start of the decline of a company when they completed their showcase palace headquarters. The problem is they became focused on the edifice rather than their business.

ghaff 10y ago
I wonder how much of that is some sort of reversion to the mean though. I.e. you often don't build a showcase palace headquarters until you've clearly been a great success. Not always of course. Executive ego can't be discounted in some cases. However, to the degree a showcase gets built when a company is riding high and growing, it's not unusual that looking out 5 or 10 years, that company won't be doing so well.
keeringplastik 10y ago
Thank you for this little nugget of wisdom! It puts one of my past employers into a relevant context.
Animats 10y ago
Drive by Apple's new mothership building in Cupertino, and you'll get that feeling. Latest drone imagery (4K): [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh_9_1FX0Yk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh_9_1FX0Yk
wu-ikkyu 10y ago
"Nothing fails like success"
Apocryphon 10y ago
The new Salesforce headquarters in S.F. is rather ominous, not only for that company but for the state of the tech boom in general.

m-i-l 10y ago

> I've always wondered why more tech companies and corporations don't embrace this aesthetic The Oracle Corporation's global HQ in Redwood City[0] does look a little like the Bonaventure Hotel[1] referenced in the original article, and has been used as a stand-in for at least one dystopian sci-fi megacorp[2]. [0] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=oracle+headquarters+redwood+city&tbm=isch https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=oracle+headquarters+redwoo... [1] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Bonaventure+Hotel&tbm=isch https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Bonaventure+Hotel&tbm=isch [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_Genisys#Filming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_Genisys#Filming

nxc18 10y ago
I always liked those buildings. I thought it was an interesting coincidence that their HQ looks exactly like the stereotypical database icon: https://www.google.com/search?q=database+logo https://www.google.com/search?q=database+logo
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]