filippo and johann,
of course, history is important, especially when the object of historical interest does not change or changed by a fixed pattern, say of gr4owth in a particular dimension.
filippo, you mention the map of a city one has developed in one's head, and needed to find one's way. but it presumes that we do not change the city as we use that map -- at least this is the presumption.
i was talking about history in regard to design. if design intervenes with what exist, innovates or revolutionizes, say, the way we can interact with each other by voice, that what is new must deviate from what existed, what has developed so far. think of the invention of the telephone. it surely makes use of human speech, which has a very long history indeed, but was always limited to how far the sound carried the articulations (i am not talking about writing). all the research into the history of speech, including sound production, can say little about how the telephone expanded the interaction among people by electric or radio devices. as i said, innovations cannot be extrapolated from existing data, they always add something new and are inherently unpredictable from the past. a design deviates from what would happen without it and this is the key to understanding design -- not research of past data.
if you are interested, click on http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html to hear about the amazing things that a good scientist can do with comparative population data. as you listen, please not the correlation he describes between family size, population size, income, mortality ... hundreds of variables by which he can predict how existing variables change. but it doesn't say anything about design (except re his own software). it's fun.
klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Filippo A. Salustri
Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2010 2:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Where do we want to go?
Johann,
I agree with you. And I'm quite puzzled by Klaus's comment. I mean, surely
even Klaus would admit that without the experiences he gathered in his past
he would not have arrived at his own unique views on the matter.
I think of it as the present being a "running total" of everything that
happened before. Since in order to plan a route to get to one's
destination, one must know where one is, and since our present is (I think)
the sum of our past, then understanding the past is essential to planning a
route to our future.
Of course, one must be careful to not let the past overly influence your
decision making about the future, but it's 6 of one and 1/2 dozen of the
other: while depending on the past may stifle creativity, /not/
understanding the past deeply can just as easily lead you into exactly the
same problematic situations that have been encountered a 1000 times before.
...as a light-hearted example of this, I often show people the following
quote and ask them who might have said it:
"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for
authority, they show disrespect for adults and love to talk rather then work
or exercise. They no longer rise when adults enter the room. They contradict
their parents, chatter in front of company, gobble down food at the table
and intimidate their teachers."
The language is such that most people correctly identify the author as /not/
contemporary, but if they don't already know the answer then respondents
invariably suggest the source dates to some time between 1900 and 1960.
The punch line is that the author is Socrates, and that, in fact, "children"
have been misbehaving for the last few millenia.
This kind of observation, about history, really informs any discussion about
the behaviour of the "young." History matters.
Cheers.
Fil
On 13 August 2010 06:52, Johann van der Merwe <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> The past is all we have, since 'the past' also includes this very moment
> that has just passed, and 'the future' is a blank page that signifies
> nothing - it hasn't been designed yet.
> The past is all important in view of where we want to be in the future -
> precisely in order not to repeat the past (mere copying of what is) and in
> order not to make the same mistakes - i.e., the future is the past
> re-designed, with more attention to what is 'real' in human association and
> networking.
> I'm very much afraid that most of design repeats exactly what was done in
> the past ... a very unsystemic way to try to innovate (i.e., move into this
> 'nothing' that is the future).
>
> Johann
>
>
> Johann van der Merwe
> HOD: Research, History & Theory of Design
> Faculty of Informatics and Design
> Cape Peninsula University of Technology
> South Africa
> >>> Klaus Krippendorff <[log in to unmask]> 08/13/10 7:41 AM >>>
> francois,
>
> history is only important when one fears to repeat it -- which design, by
> definition, never does. i am not saying that the past is irrelevant but it
> never tells you where to go, hence it is less important in view of where one
> wants to be.
>
> klaus
>
>
--
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: 416/979-5000 ext 7749
Fax: 416/979-5265
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/
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