David Sless here again
I'd like to thank everyone for bringing me up to speed, as it were,
with your current views on systems thinking. I'd particularly like to
thank Wolfgang Jonas for his excellent summary of his view of
the-story-so-far. His stepping through from the 1960s to the 1980s
exactly matches my own reading and thinking during that period.
What struck me was how well Wolfgang characterised the position I found
myself in in 1984-5, just as I was setting up the unit that became the
Communication Research Institute of Australia (CRIA).
> Returning to design: The present does not at all mark the "wave front"
> of progress, but merely consists of what has remained from the past.
> And so it happens, that we do not live in the best of all possible
> worlds. Harmony, if at all, is "post-stabilized" harmony, created in
> our narratives. The study of failed innovations ("floppology") might
> be a promising approach to improve designing: the "dark side" of the
> field is probably much richer than the "best practice" view. Design
> activities happen "in-between", they intervene into the relations of
> co-evolving autopoietic systems by means of creating artefacts that
> pretend to improve those relations. The basic problem is neither
> lacking individual creativity nor insufficient planning, but the
> uncontrollable and unpredictable nature of communication in the
> environment of the artefacts. The most developed instrument for
> bridging this kind of causality gaps between psychic systems is
> language, which enables communication. Functioning communication is
> highly improbable. Functioning design is even more improbable.
You will find references, particularly to the points you mention in
your last sentence above, in my writing of the time. It was some of
these issues that you raised that caused us to radically rethink what
we understood by communication and what it meant in practice to 'solve
communication problems' when we set up CRIA in 1985.
I asked my question about systems thinking because I had thought that,
like me, many would have moved beyond that particular way of thinking.
Clearly not. The only person I can think of on this list who in the
late 8o's took a similar 'turn' is Klaus Krippendorff. Perhaps Klaus
can enlighten us, if he's lurking.
>
> Finally, following Horst Rittel, I want to ask for some more modesty
> and irony, and less arrogance in dismissing approaches to design.
The irony is that I cannot think of a less modest or more arrogant
intellectual posture than systems thinking, and anything more
dismissive of me than to assume that my own approach was ill informed
about the last 40 years of thinking.
I had thought that it might be getting a little less lonely, but
perhaps not.
--
Professor David Sless
BA MSc FRSA
Co-Chair Information Design Association
Senior Research Fellow Coventry University
Director
Communication Research Institute of Australia
** helping people communicate with people **
PO Box 1008
Hawksburn, Melbourne
VIC 3142, Australia
UK phone: +44 (0)17 8284 8744
UK Mobile:+44 (0)79 9072 8465
fax: +61 (0)2 6259 8672
web: http://www.communication.org.au
--
Professor David Sless
BA MSc FRSA
Co-Chair Information Design Association
Senior Research Fellow Coventry University
Director
Communication Research Institute of Australia
** helping people communicate with people **
PO Box 1008
Hawksburn, Melbourne
VIC 3142, Australia
UK phone: +44 (0)17 8284 8744
UK Mobile:+44 (0)79 9072 8465
fax: +61 (0)2 6259 8672
web: http://www.communication.org.au
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