The Persistence of ‘Binary’
In our society, and in our language, we have conventions. These conventions help us make sense of things. But they can also *limit* sense-making.
Take the conventional gender binary, for example. How many people living inside it realize that it is artificial? We know it is because in some pre-colonial and non-Western cultures, gender taxonomies have evolved that aren’t strictly binary. Yet this binary stubbornly persists in our wayfinding, in our public and private architecture, and even in our language, constraining our sense-making. Binaries and other forms of categorization are considered to be born of logical necessity, but how logical, and how necessary, truly, are they?
In this talk we’re going to confront these uncomfortable questions head-on. We’re going to explore how conventions and categories, at a root level, are the greatest responsibility and the most difficult challenge of information architects. We’re not just going to talk about bathroom signs, we’re going to attempt to provoke a conversation aimed at the heart of how our society imposes imperfect categories on its members, and demonstrate with specific examples of design artifacts, what the consequences, both visible, and invisible, of this force-fitting can be.
We hope the discomfort that is inherent in this conversation forces people to confront the real-world human effects of the sense-making we all do as professionals and as humans.
