Dear All,
The threads of the past few days regarding the role of design and designers in sustainability raise many good points. There is much that we can do -- that's what I like about The Designers Accord. We need greater skills to do it than we traditionally teach in design schools that grew from the art and design tradition -- that's what I like about research-based education and evidence-based practice.
Terry is right to point to the serious problems that we encounter in dealing with multiple-loop systems. An entire range of issues oriented around reflective practice addresses what Chris Argyris and Donald Schon labeled double-loop learning in organizations. To this day, I remain astonished at the way so many people misread Schon, arguing incorrectly for reflective practice as a form of research while neglecting the key concepts Schon actually proposed. Without better tools to manage multiple-loop systems, it seems to me that designers of all kinds risk making problems worse by failing to understand the core issues in both the problem and the cycle of iterative consequences. This is true of economic, medical, and legislative designers as well as of industrial, engineering, and organizational designers.
In the 1980s and 1990s, The Union of International Associations in Brussels undertook a massive study to examine rhe nature of multiple-loop problems. Their work resulted in a reference work titled the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential. This document is available on CD-ROM, and it is also available as a free database accessible from the web. To see it, just to to the UIA web site and create a free user account.
http://www.uia.be/
In reading Fil Salustri's note, I find myself thinking of my own position on these matters. I am a pessimist in the sense that I do not hold out great hope for the human race in this century. I anticipate a near-extinction incident for humanity at the 90% level. This is not decimation as the Roman legions practiced it, executing one in ten, but novicimation as only seen in pandemics and genocidal incidents with nine of each ten dying.
Despite this, I am also an optimist. I am an optimist in believing that the changes we make now can save that remaining 10% rather than leaving everything to the cockroaches, the crocodiles, or whichever species might be left. Of course, we might really lucky and avoid the fate toward which we are now headed. If we do, it will be for the reason Louis Pasteur suggested: luck favors the prepared.
The question is not whether we can or should do something. The question is determining what appropriate action it is we should undertake. Whatever action it is, the appropriate action is always based on a simple principle: acting as though our actions make a difference to the result we hope for.
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean
Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
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