May I ask a stupid question?

I'm just a dumb, uneducated engineer turned psychologist turned design
researcher.  So I get lost in a lot of these discussions.  Design is a
fascinating field because we all come from such rich, diverse backgrounds.
But that means that commonplace concepts and people known by some are
completely unknown and mysterious to others. Especially to me. 

In reply to my last posting I was told that my comments were "
characteristic of bourdieu's work. As witthenartin and neopragmatists have
been telling us for some time ... :"

I was also told about "a reflexive system such as that represented by a
Beerian VSM (which allows it to be product or service at any time)."

So here is the stupid question.

Who or what is bourdieu, witthenartin, neopragmatists, Beerian, VSM ? What
is a "reflexive system"?

I ask stupid questions to the list because in my experience, whenever I ask
a stupid question, whether in a talk discussion period or in an internet
discussion group, other people privately come up to me and thank me because
they had the same question but were ashamed to admit it. I am not ashamed to
admit my ignorance. That's the only way to become educated.

Request: When using jargon or names of people, assume that some us are
ignorant, so can you explain for us? (Perhaps in a footnote or afterward)

Comment: I'm on the internet -- why didn’t I just look up those terms?
Answer: I tried and either failed to find them or failed to understand the
ones I did find. Wikipedia responds to some of those items, but not all of
them. But the new, democratized, "never say anything cohesive because you
have to give a reference for everything you say" policy, makes reading most
of these an exercise in even more futility. I'm a Encylopaedia Britannica
(EB) person myself, except that EB is hopelessly out of date. EB believes in
personal opinions, when those are opinions of experts, and also in cohesive,
edited writing. Now if we could only combine the coverage and timeliness of
Wikipedia with the depth, authority, and clarity of writing of EB.

Full disclosure: Although I am a fan of what Wikipedia is trying to do, you
might not wish to trust my statement about Wikipedia because I'm on the EB
Editorial Board Advisory Committee (where I ask a lot of stupid questions --
which is why they keep inviting me back). EB is now trying to add wiki-like
components to its articles to keep them more current and to take advantage
of the wisdom in the world. But still filtered through an editor to maintain
consistency and authority,.

Don



Don Norman
Nielsen Norman Group
Breed Professor of Design, Northwestern University
Visiting Distinguished Professor. KAIST, Daejeon, Korea
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www.jnd.org/