This article, written by Christian Guellerin, was published in the journal “Office et Culture” No. 77.
“The automobile is a fairly accurate equivalent of Gothic cathedrals.” This is how Roland Barthes challenges us to reveal the mythologies hidden behind everyday objects, far beyond their simple functionality. He describes the Citroën DS as an object whose function transcends mobility: a work of collective intelligence, technical ambition, and mastery of nature and space. It embodies the ideal of freedom wrested from the constraints of time. The cathedral builder calculated his arches to raise his spire to the heavens. The automobile, a collective and technological creation, transcends the know-how of its creator. It tames time and space. The DS confirms that, like God, humankind—behind the steering wheel—dominates the machine, as in the past it once dominated its horse, and thereby nature itself. We are accountable and responsible for our trajectory. Driving a car is an act of power: symbolically, the power to dominate one’s life. Humanity emancipates itself from the Almighty, humbly becoming the master of its own freedom. The object then becomes a vehicle for something that allows us to transcend ourselves.
Objects take power
Huawei has just launched a fully autonomous car on the Chinese market. We do not drive the car: it drives us. The experience isn’t new: for several years, a taxi company in San Francisco has been operating without drivers. These vehicles navigate the streets and weave through traffic, seemingly safely. The Huawei car aims to be luxurious, electric, with a power autonomy close to that of internal combustion engine vehicles, and relatively affordable: luxury and cutting-edge technology at an accessible price. Xiaomi already offers equivalent models, and Apple is preparing its own. The technology is ready at Tesla, and Uber is getting ready to launch its driverless fleet. In short, the deal is done: autonomous cars are going to flood the market. If they prove safer than the cars we drive, the fate of traditional vehicles is sealed. Who could resist the idea of watching the latest “Mission Impossible” film with the family on the dashboard screen, while the car manages the route, traffic, weather, and all environmental parameters? Huawei engineers have thought of everything: movies, internet, games, karaoke, weather, road conditions… The onboard computer will learn our usual routes, our preferences, our habits, and even anticipate our thoughts. Now we await the next technological leap: the one that will allow cars to fly.
Huawei, Xiaomi, Apple… These companies don’t come from the automotive world. They come from the world of telephony, software, and computing. They relegate established manufacturers to the status of challengers, erasing more than 150 years of industry, design, and research. They embody the true paradigm of innovation: not always doing better and better at what we already know how to do, but knowing how to do something new with what we already know how to do. Huawei does not produce cell phones, it connects people. If the goal is to connect one point to another, then the automobile becomes a natural extension of its business. Could the executives at Renault or Peugeot, trapped in an industrial culture, in turn manufacture phones? Certainly, Peugeot managed to create pepper mills… And is Porsche condemned to only make Porsches?
In the past, a car was recognized by its bodywork, its curves, its design. Today, many look alike. Exterior design gives way to the interior experience: interfaces, comfort, functionality. If we no longer drive, the car becomes an office, a living room, a cinema, a library, or even a temporary apartment. This evolution also promises significant social changes: if the car is my office, travel time becomes work time, potentially redefining our relationship to work itself. Designers who dream of designing car bodies will now have to design interfaces, services, and mobility experiences. Aesthetics are shifting: they no longer reside in the curve, but in the meaning we give to use. You have to sit in a Huawei to understand that the essential is no longer in the form, but in the experience.
When the object leads
But what is profoundly changing is our relationship with objects. We don’t control a Huawei car: it controls us. It decides the route, manages the distance to other vehicles, avoids traffic jams, chooses for us. Where Barthes saw the automobile as an instrument of emancipation, a means for humans to direct and be responsible for their freedom, this freedom is now slipping away. The autonomous car embodies the myth of the “cannibalistic machine,” which devours humanity, its will, and its freedom. HAL 9000, the onboard computer of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, refused to disobey the mission for which it had been programmed despite the pilots’ contrary orders. The machine takes power. Humans can no longer claim this superiority which, since Descartes, has been the foundation of their nature. Elon Musk perfectly illustrated this dehumanization by mentioning the responsibility a manufacturer like Tesla has in programming algorithms: when faced with the choice of not hitting an elderly woman suddenly crossing the road, should the self-driving car choose to crash into a plane tree to avoid her, endangering everyone inside? What would a human driver do in this situation? Humans cannot answer this question a priori because how can we be sure of the decision made when it comes to reacting in a millisecond? Moreover, choosing to kill one or the other is a choice beyond our comprehension. The self-driving car will be programmed a priori to make the decision that we humans ourselves could not definitively answer except in the moment. The car will know. Therefore, it becomes terrifying because it is better equipped than we are. Humans are characterized by their capacity to doubt, as Descartes suggests. But acknowledging this could be mistaken for weakness and reinforces the power of the intelligent object, which by its very nature does not doubt.
Before, the designer designed a bed. Times are changing. Recently, Federico Casalegno, Executive Vice-President of Design at Samsung Electronics, spoke at an international conference on “ethical leadership.” He discussed the evolution of the designer’s work, highlighting its importance, responsibility, and profound changes.
Federico Casalegno, Executive Vice President of Design – Samsung
In the past, a designer would design a bed and integrate it into a larger whole (an “interior architecture”) to give it meaning. A bed is more than just a piece of furniture: it must be cozy, comfortable, and functional, but it must also find its place within an ecosystem of objects. It embodies much more: a place of sleep, dreams, fantasy, desire, and eroticism. Love, passion, and even eternal rest are all played out there. Eros and Thanatos are intimately linked. Isn’t dying on stage or in one’s bed a question about the finitude of being?
Can we say that a bed is “beautiful”? Its aesthetic appeal is determined solely by the meaning we ascribe to it. But how does the designer’s work evolve when the bed becomes connected? Its form becomes less important: the designer now focuses on the sensors it incorporates, on sleep quality, on the invisible interaction between the object and its user. Each morning, the bed informs you of your sleep duration, the quality of your dreams, REM sleep, nocturnal movements, body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure. It analyzes environmental variations—temperature, noise, light, events in the house or on the street—and relays all this data to optimize your health. It can even, if necessary, alert emergency services or your doctor. Your bed is no longer just a bed: it becomes a medical relay, a tool for prevention and safety. From an object, it becomes a service. Its form matters less than the functions it provides. Thus, the object disappears behind the services it provides. This isn’t a new idea; functionality has always been central to design, but the very notion of an object is transformed, and with it, our relationship to materialism.
From carpenter to service provider: design as a driver of transition
This evolution also challenges economic models. Traditionally, a bedding manufacturer—historically a carpenter—designs, produces, and sells beds. But if the meaning given to the object changes, so do the necessary skills. It’s no longer the quality of the wood that will make the difference, but the value of the service attached to the product. The manufacturer will no longer sell an object (the product once it’s on the market), but a set of services: health, comfort, security, data. Since the valuations of product and service are different in nature, the company could even give away the product to sell or lease the service. The economic model is transformed: design-produce-sell becomes design-produce – give the bed and rent the service.
This paradigm, already tested, clearly illustrates the necessary fluidity of the market. Rank Xerox, in its time, made it a success: photocopiers, too expensive to buy, were leased based on the number of copies made. The goal wasn’t better technology, but the creation of a new social and economic need. Many sectors are now following this service-oriented logic. Tomorrow, your refrigerator will be able to assess your nutritional needs, suggest menus, order your groceries, and even adapt to your moods. Your smart shoes will detect loss of balance, prevent falls, and perhaps even alert your doctor before they happen. Thus, the shoe manufacturer will become a public health player, a link in the chain of prevention.
These examples illustrate the emergence of design in service of life, but also the need for companies to adopt more agile organizations, capable of moving from one sector to another. The designer no longer simply shapes forms: they guide uses, create systems of meaning, and now bear an ethical responsibility in the way humans interact with machines. Beyond the bed or the car, it is our entire relationship with objects that is transformed: humans no longer shape them, but rather they shape humans. Whether it’s a car, a bed, or a refrigerator, the same challenge is always at play: the transition from a controlled object to an active one.
What is the role of the designer? From creator to leader of transition
For several years now, design schools have been embracing service design. Numerous programs in user experience (UX) design and design management reflect both the evolution of companies toward innovation, the dematerialization of objects in favor of the services they provide, and the increasing digitalization of our environments. Tomorrow, these transformations will expand even further with the rise of artificial intelligence and virtual worlds. But it is difficult to escape one’s cultural origins. Design remains deeply rooted in the heritage of the applied arts, where handcraft remains the true nobility. The hand is spirit, an extension of the body and thought: it forms the link between creation and humanity, between God and Mankind. Since its origins, design—including in industry—has been perceived as an authorial, almost artisanal activity, where the creator’s singularity was glorified.
Loewy, Talon, Bertone, Pininfarina… we imagine them sketching car bodies and interiors by hand, all on their own. With ChatGPT and other artificial intelligences, this model is transforming. Design is becoming an activity of managing technological, societal, and ethical issues. It is less an individual endeavor than a collective and interdisciplinary effort, bringing together multiple skills and making them interact. The designer is no longer just a creator of forms, but a conductor of complexity. It is no longer about designing objects, graphics, or environments, or even just services, but about conceiving uses, means of action, and experiences that allow humans to fulfill their desires and needs.
As a L’Oréal executive once said: “L’Oréal doesn’t sell cosmetics, L’Oréal sells hope.” Design, too, must rise to a nobler cause: that of meaning.
Towards a new relationship with objects
The Designer as guardian of meaning in this evolution of our relationship with objects, ethics becomes the central question. The object, wrote Barthes, conveys imaginaries far beyond its functionality. But what will happen if, tomorrow, it becomes autonomous? If it invents its own relationship with others, if it anticipates our uses, our needs, our thoughts? The object, then, no longer merely serves: it acts, it decides. And, in doing so, it threatens our humanity. Should we dream of an alarm clock that would choose to let us sleep? Of a robot that would write its own biography to attest to its existence? Or of a toaster that would refuse to toast bread, judging it too dry? New technological mythologies are being written before our very eyes. Objects are becoming actors. We are moving from RAM to living memory, from artificial intelligence to embodied intelligence. The thermostat becomes a new familiar, guardian of the home; the smart speaker, a contemporary muse; the latest Huawei, a digital Pegasus, choosing our path. And the Cloud, now cosmic, knows everything, sees everything, connecting humans and objects in a new cosmogony. Faced with this transformation, the designer can no longer, alone in their studio, claim to manage the complexity of the world. Creation alone is no longer enough. Their purpose now extends beyond their design. The designer must open themselves to all disciplines, multiply exchanges, and combine knowledge. They become an ethical mediator, a conduit of meaning in a universe where objects are changing in nature and status. This question—what does it mean to be human when objects become intelligent?—must be at the heart of all companies whose purpose is to generate wealth. The emerging new relationship with objects is a fantastic playground for designers, but also an immense field of responsibility: that of preserving humanity from the machine.
The Purpose of Design
Design was born from gesture. It grew with the hand, with the tool, with materials. Today, the hand is slowly fading behind the screen, the code, and the algorithm. Objects, once extensions of our bodies, are becoming partners, and tomorrow, decision-makers. Their intelligence, designed to serve us, risks replacing us in what is most essential to us: choice. We are entering an era where humans no longer simply shape objects—they, in turn, shape us. They guide our behaviors, our desires, our gestures, sometimes without our even realizing it. The question is therefore no longer what design can do, but what it must do. The designer of tomorrow is no longer a mere creator of forms, but a mediator of meaning, a guardian of life in the world of machines. Their role is not to flee from technology, but to give it direction, a purpose. The ethical leadership they embody rests on this vision.