Dear Colleagues,

I thought I would give the debate few days to cool down and see what others
had to say, before joining in again. I will do my best not to irritate Ken,
but I offer no guarantees. I would prefer not to get into the 'you said', 'I
said' mode of debate, but again, I offer no guarantees.

I can see that that some of my seemingly cryptic remarks and dismissals are
open to different interpretation, so here is an attempt to clarify.

At the outset, however, I want to say that I stand by my original comments.
But, perhaps by unpacking them a bit, some of my reasons may at least be
clearer, if not less objectionable.

First a little personal historical footnote. In my comments on creativity I
said
> Like many hypothetical constructs in psychology, it was reified (made into
something real) in advance of any serious philosophical/conceptual analysis.
(For an example of another hypothetical construct that became prematurely
reified see my essay on attitude:
http://www.communication.org.au/html/paper_2.html).


I note that Ken did not take exception to this paper and even commented.
>Your interesting paper on the concept of attitudes was valuable because you
carefully limited your discussion to a few specific research streams and
applications. You summarized the literature in those fields fairly, and you
drew nicely reasoned conclusions from a fair statement of premises.

What Ken did not know, nor anyone else, was that as part of some research I
was doing in the mid seventies and later on design methods, I had conducted
a similar, and in some respects much more detailed analysis on the concept
of 'creativity' and the research around. I never published that research:
partly because I concluded that the area was a cul-de-sac, partly because
expressing such a view at that time was extremely unpopular, and partly
because I had limited resources and decided to move onto something which I
thought would be more positive in its outcome. When I cam to do the research
on 'attitude', I was able to draw on many of the methods and arguments that
I had developed in my study of creativity. However, the circumstances in
which that 'attitude' research was undertaken and then published were quite
different. At that time I was Director of a Research Institute and we had
many member organisations who were looking to us for advice on solving
communication problems. One of the things we noticed is that many of our
members used elaborate and expensive 'attitude surveys' to get a handle on
and then solve communication problems, both internally within their
organisations and externally with the publics they served. It was clear to
us that much of this survey data was unusable for solving the problems these
organisations had. The 'Attitude Problem' paper was part of what we did to
help our members choose less expensive and more productive methods.

I mention this now for two reasons. First, to suggest to Ken that I may not
be quite as ignorant as he says I am about creativity research, though I
have no doubt that Ken is far better informed than I could ever be, and I'm
happy to continue to bow to his superior knowledge in all matters. But
secondly (and here Ken may choose to get irritated), this little bit of
history illustrates my point about research serving interests.

My reason for mentioning the 'cold war' interests, that prompted research on
creativity, was for three reasons.

First, because it was an example I could point to easily and directly to
illustrate the point.
(Razik T A 1976 *Psychomentric measurement of creativity* in Mooney R L &
Razik T A *Explorations in Creativity* NY: Harper and Row pp 301-3.)

In this article Razik clearly and lucidly draws the connection between the
'cold war' interests and 'creativity' research. I'd love to quote it in
detail here, but that would make a long post even longer, and life is short.

Second, I used this particular example because this particular interest is
in stark contrast to many other interests in this research which, among
other, stem from humanistic, enlightened liberalism. Ken, I think, mistook
my example for a generalisation. I think he thought that my argument took
the logical form:  some research on creativity is the result of the cold
war, therefore all research on creativity is a result of the cold war. My
apologies if this seemed the case. This is obviously an argument with no
basis in logic, and it could only be true if it were empirically justified.
Ken is right to point out that it is not an argument borne out by the facts.

This leads me to my third, final and most important reason. I would contend
that any researcher, including design researchers, as a normal part of their
work, should ask the question: whose interests are served by this research?
There is nothing sinister about such a question, unless one discovers sister
interests. But, it is a vital part of any investigation of ideas or research
findings to find out something about the context in which they arise: what
did the researchers hope to find? who funded the research?, why was that
question asked at that time? who stood to benefit from the research? and so
on. In this respect, I was offering a generalisation, and I stand by it.

It so happens that some of the most illuminating insights into 20th century
design have come about by the systematic and illuminating application of
this question by a Marxist critic--Walter Benjamin--and his followers. The
question of 'who's interest?' arises, though not exclusively, out of the
tradition of marxist political economy. Sorry if this is irritating, Ken,
but I seem to remember Ken speaking kindly about uncle Walter. I know that
Ken does not like uncle Karl, but just as not all creativity research arose
from the cold war, so not all marxism arose out of the vile pestilence of
uncle Karl.  Anyway, my point is about a particular set of questions that I
regard as part of the normal 'toolkit' as it were, of the professional
researcher. Their marxist origins are interesting, but not worth getting too
excited or irritated about.

That is probably enough for now. I have a few other duties to perform.
However, I do want to return to the theme of 'creativity- the cul-de-sac'
and some of the comments that others have contributed to this thread. But
later.

(Taking Chris Rust's wise advice)

Best of wishes from Canberra, the nation's Capital. One of the most
beautiful capitals in the world, or a hell of a waste of good sheep paddock.



David

--
Professor David Sless
BA MSc FRSA
Co-Chair Information Design Association
Senior Research Fellow Coventry University
Director
Communication Research Institute of Australia
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