Dear Ken and List
Just a short guerrilla post ...
Hasn't this debate appeared before? What's yours cannot be mine, etc.
Design supreme.
We are unashamedly thieves, bricoleurs ... we are allowed to be because
good ideas do not belong to any single person or discipline.
And if a good idea could be tainted by some indiscretion of an author, I
would not be able to use Heidegger's work as I do.
I find it impossible to debate the merits or not of original work when
applied to design ... to me that borders on intellectual plagiarism
("above all be true to the source!" = nonsense), and it goes without
saying that any good idea must change when you, the design theorist,
brings it back from wherever you found it, and wish to use the idea
(behind the original work) as a design input. In doing so you confront
your ideas with this new upstart, and the "colonizer" becomes the
(blended) new citizen.
Equally, design thinking does not belong to so-called "designers" alone
... which is one of the many reasons I find the work of Maturana so
amazing (not to mention illuminating). Do I wish to colonize biology, or
think that "it" will colonize or somehow contaminate design? Enrich is
the real word, and that is renewal in design thinking ... "we" HAVE to
take/borrow from other disciplines, and as Wolfgang Jonas reminds us,
desig is a groundless field ...
Johann
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