Dear John (Shackleton) and David,
yes, you have the right to get some more explicit arguments re my
critique of the "Common Ground" conference format.
My short comments (sometimes harsh because of their brevity, I know
that) always run the risk to offend people. This was not my
intention. You organized a perfect conference according to a
well-established tradition of scientific conferences. That is a hard
job and I thank you for that!
First of all, as I told you before, I took the title as a theme. That
is because I produce papers especially for conferences, and I take
the conference titles as themes for my papers. Moreover, this time,
the title "common ground" exactly corresponded with my current
research interests (which is: design foundations). So, maybe it
really was a personal misunderstanding, resulting in a slight
disappointment on my side, for which I cannot and will not blame you.
Following the discussion on this topic there seems to be a quite
large spectrum of positions regarding titles / themes. I agree with
Dick B. that nobody could expect common ground waiting for us at the
conference. But I do not agree that building cg should only begin
after the conference. And this is where my critique begins.
There are tracks which may not need cg. That is design management,
interaction design, design history, etc., because the subject matter
plus corresponding scientific theories should be common ground enough.
But at least the philosophy section needed space and time for
developing cg DURING the conference. Talking about the essential
features of designing (for example as an activity compared to
science) does not fit into the given format of presenting isolated
research findings in, e.g., design management. And, sorry again for
insisting, the title suggested that the question of foundations was
of special interest.
As my own research activities reveal, there is not the least idea of
consent regarding foundations. There are incoherent chunks of ideas.
(Sorry again, but telling people that design should be socially
responsible cannot be a foundation. The same keynote message could
have been presented at a medicine or at an engineering conference.)
Therefore we need room for broad debate. Room for discourse, for
trying to grasp positions of others, to find connections between
positions, etc.
Here the "scientific" format is not appropriate. For example, full
papers should have been known in advance, session chairs should have
been responsible for some synthesis process, etc.
And, at least regarding the issue of foundations, the refereeing
process is not appropriate, in my view. Just because, if we do not
really know about design foundations, nobody can know "better" and
thus decide if a contribution is worth being accepted or not (mine
was, but why? no idea).
In this area we need fringe positions, surprise, creative
destruction, "collective thinking". To be quite frank: I will not
accept "authorities" in this area (of design philosophy), because, at
the present state of the art, they just create fear and conformism
and impede the evolutionary process that we need so badly.
So much for the moment,
hope this was not too harsh again,
Jonas
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