Greetings from Costa Rica.

Just two issues:

1. We are an Art, Design and Architecture school in San José, Costa Rica,
looking for international high level professionals for research and teaching
positions.

So, all those that would like to have an academic experience in this part of
the world, this is your opportunity. We can't pay too much, but the weather
is great and your get to learn Spanish. Pleae contact me for further info.

2. I would like to read comments and ideas on the concept of a graduate
program in Art and Design. This is, a general program open for Interior,
Industrial, Graphic, Environmental Designers or anybody with an
undergraduate degree in a related area, including other artists or
Architects willing to get a Masters Degree.

This is justifiable, mainly for market size reasons, and for an existing
underdevelopment of the design professions in the region. There are two main
"majors": "Design and Space" or/and "Image and Representation", with
practical seminars, workshops and research.

One specific question to comment on, is, if "Theory and Design Research"
should be gathered in one same knowledge area.

All ideas and general comments will be welcome...

Regards

Ronald Sasso


-----Mensaje original-----
De: Ken Friedman [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Enviado el: Lunes 21 de Enero de 2002 04:08 PM
Para: [log in to unmask]
Asunto: How design influences the future: sources for case research


Dear Colleagues,

When Jean Schneider's request came up, I posted him off-list. At
Lubomir's suggestion, I am reposting this to the entire list,
reformatted slightly.

The field needs good cases. Perhaps when Jean gets prepress these
cases, he will make them available for use in teaching and research.

Best regards,

Ken Friedman



Dear Jean,

There is terrific book by Patrice Flichy that gives the history of
several important cases on how technology has influence the shape of
society.

This is design in the larger sense, that is, there are designers
involved, but there are also policy makers, engineers, and
technologists who design through their future oriented actions.

Because this is told as a social history of technology and
communication, you'll have to build your own case narrative. Even so,
it is very useful.

The earliest cases are European cases, especially the French and
English semaphore telegraph systems and early experiments on the
electric telegraph, but some later cases inevitably involve the
United States as a primary center for communication technology.

Flichy is especially good on demonstrating the connections between
technical and social change, and the political context that gives
rise to change and is in turned transformed by it.

The French edition is

Flichy, Patrice. 1991. Une histoire de la communication moderne:
Espace public et vie privée. Paris: Editions Découverte.

The English Edition is:

Flichy, Patrice. 1995. Dynamics of modern communication. The shaping
and impact of new communication technologies. London: Sage
Publications.

Here are four more good books

Three are primarily European, one essentially American.

Arnold Pacey's Maze of Ingenuity looks into different examples of
planned invention and technological development starting in 1100 with
the development of cathedrals.

He shows repeatedly how planned intentions or designs of different
kinds have affected the future.

Pacey, Arnold. 1992. The maze of ingenuity. Ideas and idealism in the
development of technology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

The next is Information Ages, an account of the many strands of
information technology that lead from Homer's time to the computer
era.

Hobart, Michael E. and Zachary S. Schiffman. 1998. Information ages.
Literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore, Maryland:
The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Finally, there is a book showing how different aspects of information
technology have transformed one nation over the period of three
centuries.

Chandler, Alfred D., Jr., and James W. Cortada. 2000. A nation
transformed by information. How information has shaped the United
States from colonial times to the present. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Finally, there is Jean Gimpel's book on the industrial revolution of
medieval times.

Gimpel, Jean. 1992. The Medieval machine. The industrial revolution
of the Middle Ages. Second edition. London: Pimlico.

You will find examples of services design in all of these, and many
good examples of architecture design in Gimpel and in Pacey.

The Flichy book and these other four allow you to trace the
historical impact of design thinking in a variety of cases that cross
five millennia.

While you will have to put the lines of each case together in your
own narrative, some of the issues demonstrate remarkable qualities.

The first is that design thinking - especially in the design of
processes and services - has powerful impact on the future.

The second is that these effects often occur in fields quit different
than those for whom the designer plans his or her innovation.

Societies are large, diffuse entities. New ways of thinking, new
kinds of technology - including social technology and service
technology - are inevitably seen by many people other than the
audience for which they were first planned. As this happens,
diffusion takes place and ideas move from one field to the next,
often with surprising results.

As these techniques move from one social frame to another, the
proportion of their influence may weaken or it may grow. A minor
innovation in one field can lead to revolutionary consequences in
another field simply because it enables a new behavior in an area
that was ripe for the transformation that behavior enables.

Accounting is a good case in point. The special inventions
surrounding accounting and bookkeeping began nearly five thousand
years ago in the ancient hydraulic empires of Sumeria, Egypt,
Assyria, and Babylonia.

Most of the social changes enabled by accounting for the first
several thousand years were significant, but relatively minor. Things
took a dramatic change in medieval Italy with the invention of
double-entry bookkeeping.

Some of this also touches on art history. In 1458, Benedetto Cotrugli
developed the central concepts of modern, double-entry bookkeeping in
his treatise, Delia Mercatura et del Mercante Perfetto. Luca Pacioli
incorporated Cotrugli's innovations in his 1494 book, Summa de
Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita. In this book,
Pacioli included a section on reckoning and writing as a guide to
business. Pacioli was a friend of Leonardo Da Vinci, who illustrated
his 1497 book on proportion.

This had profound effects in at least four fields. One was art.
However, the systematization of quantitative accounting also
reflected important changes in the late medieval mind, and these
paved the way for the scientific revolution. New techniques in
graphic and numerical representation of scientific discoveries were
made possible in part by the same discoveries that influenced
accounting. The third field was business. Combined with the growing
importance of international trade, trade fairs, and the first banking
empires of Italy and Germany, accounting helped to pave the way for
important development sin banking, commerce, and finally in finance.
These, in turn, were tremendously significant to the industrial
revolution. Finally, accounting enabled modern bureaucracy and an
entire series of measures on which the modern nation-state depends.
Accounting thus enabled a political transformation of astonishing
dimensions.

None of these books tells the whole story. You must other sources to
put some narratives together. Even so, these four books and Flichy
will give you some rich cases on how designed innovations changed the
future in powerful ways.

Best regards,

Ken




--snip--

I am looking for cases that could be studied, and would demonstrate
that a design approach (not necessarily done by patented designers
though) has contributed to the definition and shaping of future ways
of living.

The cases might be old, it might even be nice, as the whole
documentation might become available; and it is not required that the
product/service was put on the market and became successfull, as long
as one could say that it became influential.

I would be very happy if people would also bring up cases besides the
technofreak world (I mean, besides Philips design visions or these
kind of things). Things that would have to do with public health,
education, societal issues such as violence, alphabetization, etc are
welcome. And of course environmental ones as well?

In the same way, it doesn't have to be product design, but services,
architecture or graphic design are equally interesting to me.

I would prefer cases within Europe (for documentation purposes only),
but please feel free to send me whatever cases you have in mind, and
I'll dig my way to the info if I am interested.


--snip--