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Reading Response 2
Chapter 2: Designing Expressive Toys
I felt a strange sense of unease as I read this chapter for the first time. It felt kind of like the sense of presence you get when someone is unexpectedly standing just outside your field of vision. I very much enjoyed reading the chapter, so I tried to just ignore that feeling and write about something else, some other idea amongst the many that Wang presentsin the chapter. As I got to page 92 though, where Wang briefly describes the "birth of mass consumption of music," I think I found the source of my unease, and I felt that I should write about it.
On that page, he describes the evolution of music consumption technologies, starting from the phonograph, continuing through the cloud, and leaving a blank space at the very end labeled, "what's next?"
The book was written in 2018, long before the release of any of the modern generative AI models, but as I read that page, many of the hopes for the future this chapter expressed, the future we live in now, seemed to acquire an undercurrent of horror. What's next? Of course, as with every other conversation we have about technology, the answer is AI.
I don't want to keep talking about AI, honestly, and I promise there's somewhere else I'm going with this, but I think it's important to start here. On the very next page, Wang writes, "We now have more access to music than ever before, as listeners and consumers! Yet somehow I feel we are making less music than ever." Later in the page, he writes, "...the inconvenient truth is that music-making is constantly being threatened, not by computer music research but rather by the countless 'distractions' enabled by modern technology."
Wang's remarks here were prescient. With the benefit of hindsight, and in light of the isolating effect of the rise AI-generated music, I think several design principles stand out as particularly important to champion in the making of so-called useless toys.
To begin with, the very first principle of the chapter, to "design for play and delight" is of the utmost importance. Play and delight suspend the otherwise pervasive instrumentalism of our lives, they are an end in and of themselves.
I am especially compelled by principle 2.6, "technology should create calm." It seems that in recent years, the optimism surrounding technology prevalent in the 2010s has largely evaporated, replaced with a sense that, as a society, may have ceded more power to the tech giants than we should have. At the same time, I think there has been a counter-current of people finding calm and sublimity in their technology, especially when its ties to Big Tech are loosened. I am reminded of one of my favorite albums of all time, I Love My Computer by Australian electronic musician Ninajirachi, released in August 2025. As the title suggests, the album is a love letter to Ninajirachi's computer in particular. It's incredible album from a sonic perspective, but also expresses a love I feel for technology and its possibilities absent the corrosive influence of Big Tech. I highly recommend giving it a listen, it's really incredible. I especially implore you to watch the music video for the song Infohazard. It's a piece of art that deeply affected me, and I hope you as well.
For the first time, the process of making music has been disconnected entirely from the result of that process. I think, and I hope, that the connection that the process of music-making fosters will win out over the incoming deluge of slop.
We live in a time where technology is being instrumentalized towards remarkably evil ends. If being useful means contributing towards those ends, I hope that what I make remains a toy; I hope it remains entirely devoid of use.