Today I'm going to unpack for you
three examples of iconic design,
and it makes perfect sense
that I should be the one to do it
because I have a Bachelor's degree in Literature.
(Laughter)
But I'm also a famous
minor television personality
and an avid collector of
Design Within Reach catalogs,
so I pretty much know
everything there is.
Now, I'm sure you
recognize this object;
many of you probably saw it
as you were landing your private zeppelins
at Los Angeles International Airport
over the past couple of days.
This is known as the Theme Building;
that is its name for reasons
that are still very murky.
And it is perhaps
the best example we have in Los Angeles
of ancient extraterrestrial architecture.
It was first excavated in 1961
as they were building LAX,
although scientists believe that
it dates back to the year 2000
Before Common Era,
when it was used as
a busy transdimensional space port
by the ancient astronauts
who first colonized this planet
and raised our species
from savagery by giving us
the gift of written language
and technology and
the gift of revolving restaurants.
It is thought to have been
a replacement for the older space ports
located, of course, at Stonehenge
and considered to be
quite an improvement
due to the uncluttered design,
the lack of druids hanging around all the time
and obviously, the much better
access to parking.
When it was uncovered,
it ushered in a new era
of streamlined, archaically futuristic design
called Googie,
which came to be synonymous with
the Jet Age, a misnomer.
After all, the ancient astronauts who used it
did not travel by jet very often,
preferring instead to travel by feathered serpent
powered by crystal skulls.
(Applause)
(Music)
Ah yes, a table.
We use these every day.
And on top of it,
the juicy salif.
This is a design by Philippe Starck,
who I believe is in the audience at this very moment.
And you can tell it is a Starck design
by its precision, its playfulness,
its innovation and
its promise of imminent violence.
(Laughter)
It is a design that challenges your intuition --
it is not what you think it is when you first see it.
It is not a fork designed
to grab three hors d'oeuvres at a time,
which would be useful out in the lobby,
I would say.
And despite its obvious
influence by the ancient astronauts
and its space agey-ness and tripodism,
it is not something
designed to attach to your brain
and suck out your thoughts.
It is in fact a citrus juicer
and when I say that,
you never see it as anything else again.
It is also not a monument to design,
it is a monument to design's utility.
You can take it home with you,
unlike the Theme Building,
which will stay where it is forever.
This is affordable
and can come home with you
and, as such, it can sit
on your kitchen counter --
it can't go in your drawers;
trust me, I found that out the hard way --
and make your kitchen counter into
a monument to design.
One other thing about it,
if you do have one at home,
let me tell you one of the features you may not know:
when you fall asleep,
it comes alive
and it walks around your house
and goes through your mail
and watches you as you sleep.
(Applause)
Okay, what is this object?
I have no idea. I don't know what that thing is.
It looks terrible. Is it a little hot plate?
I don't get it.
Does anyone know? Chi?
It's an ... iPhone. iPhone.
Oh yes, that's right, I remember those;
I had my whole bathroom tiles
redone with those back in the good old days.
No, I have an iPhone. Of course I do.
Here is my well-loved iPhone.
I do so many things on this little device.
I like to read books on it.
More than that, I like to buy books on it
that I never have to feel guilty about not reading
because they go in here and I never look at them again
and it's perfect.
I use it every day to
measure the weight of an ox,
for example.
Every now and then,
I admit that I complete
a phone call on it occasionally.
And yet I forget about it all the time.
This is a design
that once you saw it,
you forgot about it.
It is easy to forget the gasp-inducement
that occurred in 2007 when you first
touched this thing because it became
so quickly pervasive
and because of how instantly
we adopted these gestures
and made it an extension of our life.
Unlike the Theme Building,
this is not alien technology.
Or I should say,
what it did was it took technology
which, unlike people in this room,
to many other people in the world,
still feels very alien,
and made it immediately and instantly feel
familiar and intimate.
And unlike the juicy salif,
it does not threaten
to attach itself to your brain,
rather, it simply
attaches itself to your brain.
(Laughter)
And you didn't even notice it happened.
So there you go. My name is John Hodgman.
I just explained design.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)