Terry,
I will leave to Klaus the requested “saying more” around the
proposition that 'Innovations cannot be extrapolated from existing data,
they always add something new and are inherently unpredictable from the
past’ but the arguments in your last post are so misleading they call
for a wider rebuttal. 

1. If no innovation arrives sui generis and if all innovations can be
archaeologically re-constructed as to their origins—much in the way
that art historians used to avidly pursue “influences” on
artists—Klaus’ major point still stands in that genuinely
configurative innovations (note the qualification here) can only be
retrospectively and indeed artificially extrapolated. A simple example:
The London Underground Diagram (1931 and passim). If you study of the
conditions surrounding the mapping of the London underground system
between between 1908 and the late 1920s you can retrospectively identify
the ways in which the paradigm of “map” was breaking down. By
looking at some of Stingmore’s maps of the system c.1930 you can
identify all the elements that went into Harry Beck’s transformation
of the map into diagram in 1931. But what you cannot do, or can do only
illegitimately, is to suppose that there is no decisive break between
the one and the other, between ‘past’ (Stingmore) and the new
present (Beck). The configurative innovation that Beck introduced a)
cannot be fully extrapolated from the existing models; b) adds
‘something new and inherently unpredictable’ from the past. In
short, Beck’s diagram constitutes a genuine innovative event—or I
would say a genuine configurative event. Two more small examples, this
time from around 1960, might make the same point—i.e. the
configurative innovation of the Austin-Morris Mini and Mary Quant’s
configurative innovation of the mini-skirt

2. ‘Path dependence of innovations by which they are tightly linked
to and dependent on past innovations’ are best thought of by looking
at the path as a whole as the innovative sequence. Prediction of
developmental possibilities within a sequence is not necessarily
innovation—unless and until, in design terms, that sequence issues in
an unpredictable configurative jump. To what extent is Apple’s
development of the GUI the setting in chain of a sequence where a
fundamental innovation acts ‘as if’ it were an evolutionary leap,
opening a whole new series of developmental possibilities? Or, to return
to the LUD, to what extent is it the sequential grand-father of a whole
series of like-minded transformations of maps-into-diagrams for urban
transit networks? 

3. To see technological innovations and sometimes design
transformations as setting in chain innovative and developmental
sequences is to allow us to see the issues of ‘path dependence’ and
‘delay between innovation and appearance on the market’ providing we
play both also through economics and the market and through the issue of
categories. For example, an object like a video-recording or a DVD
player is in practice not determined by form-follows-function but by
form follows category (in this case “home entertainment”).
Configurative innovation with these objects would involve the
re-configuration of these objects such that they broke with the existing
category. A silly example would be Ron Arad’s Concrete Stereo of the
late 1970s, an object of unpredictable innovation whose value is to
throw light onto the fact that in fact the design of most such consumer
goods is indeed path-determined, but not necessarily by objective
technological considerations, rather by social, cultural and economic
categories. 

4. To call the possibility of changes or developments ‘in the
governance of Bolivia over the next decade or two’ (due to the fact
that it ‘holds 50% of the worlds reserves of lithium and is not
militarily one of the stronger nations innovations’) “innovations”
is to stretch the word beyond meaning. Innovations are not simple
changes. They are much more like (unpredictable) events. Innovations may
well occur in the governance of Bolivia over the next half-century; but
they will be innovations only when and if they issue in a new
configuration or new mode of governance; when, in effect, there is the
invention of new ways of governing Bolivia. Such new ways of
governance—if they are indeed innovations and not simply the
borrowing of models from elsewhere or the imposition of different (but
existent) patterns of how states are governed. To put it simply: all
change is not innovation. 

5. If one was to restrict a definition of design to 'newness' and ‘to
social interactions as theory foundations’ might have a point that
such a definition ‘doesn't seem to work.’ But I don’t think Klaus
was making such a restrictive definition. I understood him to be saying
that in so far as configurative change (design) brings something
“new” into the world then, at certain qualitative points of
change (what we call “innovations”) what is made or brought into the
world in this way cannot be fully extrapolated from the existing
“data” (or existing fields of objects) and that their
configuration adds something new (something that we may, at first,
scarcely understand). This, I think, is a necessary—though not
sufficient—aspect of any adequate theory of design. One aspect of its
necessity is that it deals with one of the most essential internal
aspects of design, namely that design operates—we might say
exclusively operates—on the configuration of things. Clearly, in the
re-configuration of things there is a spectrum of transformation that
goes from reproduction and duplication of what-is (what I will
flippantly call the “Hong Kong” model of design) through to the
genuinely innovative—where the degree of configurative transformation
is such that one word we use to describe such things (especially today)
is “innovations.”  Innovations then are originary events. Existing
within and coming from a historical sequence they nonetheless alter that
sequence—and often in unpredictable ways. Any adequate theory of
design must include this moment—otherwise it does not comprehend much
of what is salient to design. Including these moments in an adequate
theory of design does not, contrary to your (un-argued) statement
fail” any of your five tests. 

6. Given that all design issues from and is conducted in response to
the social then there can be no adequate theory of design that is not in
some manner in grounded in social construction and social creation. 

Best wishes

Clive 


Clive Dilnot
Professor of Design Studies
Parsons School of Design/
New School University
Room #731, 7th Floor
6 E16th St
New York 
NY 10011

T. (1)-212-229-8916  x1481


>>> Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> 8/17/2010 12:52 PM >>>
Hi Klaus,

Thank you for your comments.

You wrote: <snip>'Innovations cannot be extrapolated from existing
data,
they always add something new and are inherently unpredictable from
the
past. <endsnip> '

Please can you say more. Reality seems to be the opposite. 

One of the things I find  obvious is the path dependence of innovations
by
which they are tightly linked to and dependent on past innovations.
Mostly
future innovations are fairly easy to see at least in broad brush
format
for a decade or more  ahead. For  example as soon as it was obvious in
the
70s that logic chips and  small electromechanical actuators would be
mass
produced, you could (and lots of us did) immediately predict most of
the
consumer items that we have seen developed since then. Similarly, you
can
see now that the rapid rise in battery powered devices (particularly
phones
and electric cars) will result in particular kinds of 'innovations' in
the
governance of Bolivia over the next decade or two. This doesn't take
much.
There are only a few places lithium is available in easy to access
quantities. Bolivia holds 50% of the worlds reserves and is not
militarily
one of the stronger nations. You might also predict some innovations
in
governance and trade in Afghanistan now lithium has been discovered
there.
Similarly, it is possible to predict some innovations in future
US-Iranian
negotiations due to the fact that  Hezbollah and the IRGC are well
represented in South America near Bolivia.

Linking  definitions of design to  'newness' and to social interactions
as
theory foundations doesn't seem to  work on several fronts.  In the
90s, I
also defined design in terms of newness and social creation. It seemed
obviously useful, however, to test definitions of design -  there are
hundreds of them. Some of the tests I used included: 1) Did the
definitions
successfully include everything that people seemed to think should be
included in  design?; 2) Did they  exclude things that didn't seem to
be
design? 3) Did they work to make a coherent theory picture across all
the
disciplines that have strong literatures of design and design theory?;
4)
Did they make sense in terms of providing good coherence for design
with
theories from other fields ?; and 5) Did they fit with observable
reality?
Defining design activity as dependent on newness and social
construction and
independent of the past seemed to fail several of the above. 

A key issue in theorising about design at a macro-scale seems to be how
to
deal with 2 issues: path dependence and delay between innovation and
appearance on the market. For example, ideas about devices similar to
the
iPad were around in the 80s. In the mid-90s (15 years ago), I wrote my
PhD
thesis on an A4 size lightweight touch sensitive Compaq computer
screen
using 'Pen Windows 1.0'.  It worked well (especially compared to the
Newton)
and recognised my handwriting (even I have difficulty with that!). It
was
easy to see then that sometime in the future Apple would eventually
come up
with the iPad or something similar  - and that it would likely be more
user
friendly because  that appears to be a focus of Apple's design effort.
It's
just taken rather a long time!

Can you suggest areas of design that could not be extrapolated from
prior
art?

Best wishes,
Terry