Ah, but this is what I was trying to get at in an earlier post (under  
a different subject heading)... the resistance of the word to absolute  
definition is the fascinating thing about it - it is a key term, a  
'mobilizing metaphor', in that it can associate with so many different  
meanings at once, and be taken up by so many people, and function as  
it does, quite nearly as a 'total social fact' - impacting and  
organizing many different parts of society.

Eduardo is very right to highlight the social and historical contexts  
of the word(s) and, most importantly, their USE - this can often  
reveal much more than any definition, per se.  Which is why a 'social  
history of the present' is so important to understanding the  
significance of the concept of design.  It's deployment in media,  
advertising, retail, business, medicine, policy, etc. is as important  
to understanding the concept as any definition (of course, efforts to  
define it in any arena are just as important - though not for their  
relative degrees of accuracy!).

The genie is indeed out of the bottle, and despite it's confused (or  
polyvalent) identity, it's playing an ever more important role in  
shaping social structure, relationships of power, concepts of order,  
progress and even morality!  It is already functioning as a "belief  
mechanism" (and therefore, perhaps already being "abused"?)!

Juris Milestone, Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania


On Jun 23, 2008, at 12:10 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:

> It would be very hard to work out when design (as we collectively
> understand it to mean) came in to effective use in our language,
> when we can't even successfully define it yet....    :-)
>
> The Great Exhibition of 1851 helped illustrate the 'lack of design' of
> Victorian manufactured products against those
> manufactured by hand and via 'arts and crafts' from overseas. It  
> might be
> argued we knew what the 'absence of design' was from that date.
>
> Design and Product design is probably much more recent - starting  
> with the
> big 3 - Bel Geddes, Loewy and Teague, and of course the Bauhaus, etc.
>
> It seems the problem, is more focused on who accepts the concept of a
> designer. Society has created the designer fad, and that genie
> can't quite fit back in the hand manufactured bottle of the last  
> century.
>
> If, as I now worry, design is what each of us believes it to be, not  
> only
> will it be nearly impossible to concur on that definition, then
> it will be open to abuse as a belief mechanism.
>
> For example, the sub phrase/ sub plot 'everyone will be a designer'  
> cannot
> be argued against or even analysed, regardless of language. Best,  
> Glenn
>
>
> Eduardo wrote:
>
> Dear Terry and Glenn,
>
> I think that the interesting query/quest is to ask when did Design  
> entered
>
> your language, spite of your own word for it, and meaning what?
>
> Cheers,
> Eduardo
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