What Are Effects?

Effects are the actual outcomes, consequences, and transformations that emerge from any action, object, or process. Effects are distinct from and often divergent from their intended purposes or functions. Effects encompass the full spectrum of what actually happens in the world when something is made, done, or introduced, including the unintended, emergent, and systemic consequences that ripple across multiple scales and domains of experience.

Because effects exist distinct from both intention and defined function, effects challenge our conventional focus on fixed concepts of utility, function, and purpose. While we habitually ask, “Is it useful? Does it do what you intended it to do?” – These questions ironically take us away from understanding what something actually does in the world. A chair may be designed for sitting, but its effects include shaping social arrangements, influencing posture and health, participating in economic systems, and contributing to material flows and environmental impacts.

The measure of things is not found in their intended utility but in their relational effects - how they participate in actual ways of being alive. These effects are neither contained within objects nor reducible to designers’ intentions. They emerge from the dynamic relationships between things, contexts, and the ongoing processes of life.

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Where Can We Find Effects?

Effects are fundamentally processes of worldmaking. When innovation happens, problems are not simply solved - worlds are made. Every effect participates in the continuous creation and transformation of the conditions within which we live, think, and act. This worldmaking dimension of effects operates at multiple scales simultaneously, from intimate bodily experiences to global ecological and social systems.

Consider the effects of the smartphone as a technological ensemble. Beyond its intended functions of communication and information access, its effects include the transformation of attention patterns, the reshaping of social interaction, changes in urban navigation, new forms of surveillance, altered sleep cycles, and the emergence of entirely new economic and social structures. These effects are not accidents or side effects - they are the actual world that the smartphone participates in making.

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How Can We Understand Effects?

Effects can be understood as the agency of assemblages - the capacity of relational wholes to transform their constituent parts and contexts. When elements come together in specific configurations, they generate effects that exceed the sum of their individual properties. These emergent effects then feed back to reshape the very elements that produced them, creating ongoing cycles of mutual transformation.

Effects also reveal the political dimension of making. We do not create neutral objects that people can freely choose to use responsibly or otherwise. The things we make are world makers - they actively shape reality and fundamentally contribute to who we become. Recognizing effects means acknowledging that making is always already political, always participating in the construction of particular ways of being alive.

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Where Do Effects Emerge From?

Effects emerge from relationships and cannot be located in any single component. They are properties of assemblages rather than discrete objects or individuals.

• Multiple and Divergent: Any action or object generates a field of effects, not a single outcome. These include intended results, unintended consequences, emergent possibilities, and effects that operate across different domains and scales.
• Temporal and Dynamic: Effects unfold over time and continue to evolve. What something effects now may be entirely different from its future effects as contexts and relationships change.
• Cross-Scale: Effects operate simultaneously at multiple scales - from molecular to global, from immediate to generational, from local to planetary.
• Non-Linear: Small effects can have large consequences, and large interventions can produce minimal effects. The relationship between cause and effect is complex and often surprising.

Understanding effects transforms how we approach creative work. Rather than focusing primarily on solving predefined problems or fulfilling intended functions, we learn to sense and work with the actual worlds our actions participate in making. This requires developing capacities for world-disclosing - the ongoing practice of sensing the propensities and tendencies of what is emerging from our creative engagements.
Effects-based thinking also reveals the profound responsibility inherent in all making. Since everything we create participates in worldmaking, the critical question becomes: what world does this participate in making stronger and more widespread? This shifts creative practice from a focus on individual expression or problem-solving toward collective world-tending.

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How Can I Work with Effects in My Creative Practice?

Working with effects requires experimental and responsive approaches rather than predictive planning. Since effects emerge from complex relational dynamics, they cannot be fully known in advance but must be discovered through engaged experimentation and careful attention to what actually unfolds.

This suggests moving from solution-centric approaches to world-making approaches that take complexity into account. Rather than assuming we can control outcomes through better design or implementation, we learn to work with the creative agency of the systems we participate in, developing skills in sensing, following, and responsively shaping emergent processes.

Effects-based practice also emphasizes the importance of ongoing attention and adjustment. Since effects continue to evolve and generate new effects, creative work becomes a continuous process of engagement rather than a discrete project with a defined endpoint.

The concept of effects ultimately invites us to expand our understanding of creativity and innovation beyond human-centered, individualistic models toward recognition of the more-than-human, relational, and worldmaking dimensions of all creative action. In this expanded view, creativity becomes a collaborative practice of participating in the ongoing invention of worlds worth inhabiting.

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See also: Technology, Assemblages, Worldmaking