Dear Friends - another argument that a product is a form of
information is contained in this passage from a much longer paper
which I would be happy to share with anyone requesting it of me off
line.
The Design Ecosystem
Because of the way in which innovative designs emerge as the self-
organization of the components of which they are composed the
designer must be aware of the entire design ecosystem in which they
operate. We have identified what we consider to be the complete set
of components of the design ecosystem within which the designer or
design team must operate (Logan and Van Alstyne 2009). The actors and
processes of the design ecosystem that we have formulated are listed
in the following table:
Principal Components of the Design Ecosystem:
Primary actors
Users with their needs, desires and expectations
Client or business as commissioner, producer, distributor
Designer as catalyst and pattern provider working directly with the
technology
Essential activities
Researching, studying
Imagining, envisioning, creating
Creating a business plan, marketing, pricing
Engineering, prototyping, testing
Support issues
Managing, collaborating, financing
Manufacturing, performing, distributing
Using, enjoying, criticizing
Key environmental elements
Technosphere: prior products, services, systems and processes
Societal, cultural and behavioral norms
Market conditions
Legal and regulatory codes
Biosphere: the web of life and the natural environment
Material and energetic inputs
Constraints of natural law
A list of the components does not do justice to the dynamics of the
design ecosystem. Greg Van Alstyne and I have therefore fashioned a
diagram of the design ecosystem representing the three principal
actors of the user (or customer), the client and the designer in
terms of overlapping circles. The sweet spot of the three
overlapping circles is the innovation zone. The overlap of the client
and the user is the problem finding zone. The overlap of the client
and the designer is the problem framing zone. The overlap of the
designer and the user is the problem solving zone.
We have indicated the principal activities exclusively conducted by
the client, the user and the designer within their respective spheres
or circles. Finally on the outside of the circles of the three
principal actors we have placed the external conditions and
constraints or environmental elements within which the three actors
must operate. In some cases the designers and the clients are members
of the same organization but they operate in different departments of
that organization.
There is a flow of information and money or value between the three
principal actors. Information must flow from the users to the
designer so that the innovation meets the users needs and then from
the designer to the client so that the client can create and
distribute the product or the service that has been designed.
Information flows from the client to the user in turn in the form of
the organization of the product or service. Money flows in the
opposite direction from the users or customers to the client to pay
for the product or service and then from the client to the designer
to pay for the designer’s services and value rather than money flows
from the designer to the users in terms of the attention the designer
pays to the user to satisfy their needs.
______________________
Robert K. Logan
Chief Scientist - sLab at OCAD
Prof. Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto
www.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan
On 24-Nov-10, at 9:04 AM, bob logan wrote:
> Dear Friends - To all following this thread: I have a definition of
> data, information, knowledge and wisdom that might shed some light
> on this interesting question. I believe that the cell phone and all
> artifacts or tools contain information not knowledge.
>
> This is an excerpt from my latest book "What is Information". I am
> happy to share the first chapter with any interested readers of
> this listserv.
> Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom
>
> There is often a lack of understanding of the difference between
> information and knowledge and the difference between explicit and
> tacit knowledge, which we herewith define in the following manner;
>
> • Data are the pure and simple facts without any particular
> structure or organization, the
>
> basic atoms of information,
>
> • Information is structured data, which adds meaning to the data
> and gives it context and
>
> significance,
>
> • Knowledge is the ability to use information strategically to
> achieve one's objectives, and
>
> • Wisdom is the capacity to choose objectives consistent with one's
> values within a larger social context.
>
> ______________________
>
> Robert K. Logan
> Chief Scientist - sLab at OCAD
> Prof. Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto
> www.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan
>
> On 23-Nov-10, at 10:27 PM, Pedro oliveira wrote:
>
>> Hi Terry, Teena, Jeremy et all,
>>
>> Perhaps I am being too simplistic. I'm not much of a discourse/
>> Foucault person. I would even dare say I'm not much of a
>> sophisticated intellectual at all, although I still enjoy the
>> stimulation of being in touch with academia. Take a look at my
>> blog, if you'd like and you will see a (PhD) anthropologist with
>> an interest in design anthropology, yet out of academia by choice
>> and working in applied research for corporations these days. I am
>> no game for either of you, less so in design matters. But what I
>> was trying to show are two things that I believe, perhaps by life
>> experience, professional experience as much as previous studies.
>> Both are moot points:
>>
>> 1) 'The answers you get are a direct function of the question you
>> ask' (Christina Toren, 1999).
>>
>> If a question (and an interesting question, if I may add) like the
>> one Terry has thrown to the table is asked, it deserves a
>> considerate answer. I gave it my best shot. Wheather or not there
>> was a fallacy from the beginning, from where I stand, lies in
>> asking weather it is worth comparing custard puddings and mobile
>> phones as artefacts that contain knowledge. I don't tend to ask
>> that kind of questions, reason why Terri's question was all the
>> more interesting to me. But then I'm a pragmatist (and I mean
>> 'pragmatist' in the philsophical sense as well, Richard Rorty and
>> so on) with all its limits and potentiailities.
>>
>> 2) Artefatcs contain knowledge to the direct proportion they
>> mirror a notion of the human mind. I can see a reflexion of the
>> human mind and its workings in the design of a mobile phone more
>> so than I can see it in a custard pudding. That is why the design
>> of a mobile phone, as the physical object standing in my hand,
>> even before cultural context (or right with it), already gives me
>> a better clue of how my mind comes to know both (custard puddings
>> and mobile phones) or either, as well as what I know about them
>> and what I suspect they don't know I know. I would say that the
>> design of a mobile phone is a better 'candidate' to know the human
>> mind than a custard pudding...this, of course, until somebody
>> proves me wrong. Once more, this is ultimately a moot point and a
>> pragmatic stance.
>>
>> Thank you all for an evening of good talk and stimulation.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Pedro
>> http://appliedbusinessanthropology.blogspot.com/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --- On Wed, 24/11/10, teena clerke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>
>> From: teena clerke <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: whether a cell phone is knowledge
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Date: Wednesday, 24 November, 2010, 3:02
>>
>>
>> Hi Terry,
>>
>> the clearest way I can say this is that the 'custard pudding' (as
>> material object itself produced from other material objects
>> through a process of 'knowing how to make one', both the pudding
>> and the process do not have inherent meanings in and of
>> themselves, but can only known through discourse) and the people
>> who interact with it (by making, smelling, judging, eating,
>> rejecting, cleaning) are implicated in a relation of knowledge, a
>> relation which is differently produced and maintained
>> (disciplined) in different discourses. According to Foucault,
>> power and knowledge cannot be separated, while power-knowledge
>> discourses discipline (people and objects) through various
>> technologies (of discipline). So within a power-knowledge
>> discourse of commercial cookery, the custard and commercial cooks
>> are positioned in a particular relation of knowledge within this
>> discourse, whereby together they embody knowledge. Simply said,
>> each needs the other to be able to say
>> what a custard pudding is, how it is made, and what qualities
>> makes it so and to what standard, etc., as well as who can 'know'
>> this stuff.
>>
>> How one can 'know' a custard pudding, and how it can be 'known' at
>> all, is determined by how individuals are positioned within this
>> relation of knowing (in this particular power-knowledge
>> discourse). To take me as an example, as I am not a commercial
>> cook, I am not positioned in this power-knowledge discourse as a
>> 'knower' (one who knows) in relation to the custard pudding. That
>> is, I cannot say how a custard pudding comes to be, how to
>> evaluate or 'know' it as a custard pudding, how it is made and
>> whether it is good, or indeed a custard pudding or something else.
>> Thus, the custard pudding embodies knowledge (has/contains/
>> embodies meaning within a commercial cooking discourse), while I
>> do not (within the same discourse). However, if I eat a custard
>> pudding, and depending on where I eat it (in a high quality
>> restaurant for example), we are both implicated in a relation of
>> knowing through our interaction, even if I cannot tell if it is a
>> good one (meaning,
>> I cannot make the same sense of 'custard pudding' as other
>> differently positioned people in this discourse, those who
>> determine what it is, how it is made, etc.).
>>
>> Clear as custard I suspect. And meddling is welcome Pedro,
>> although I am not game to venture into the power-knowledge domain
>> of cell phones apart from to say that in Australia, I 'know' them
>> as mobile phones.
>> cheers, teena
>>
>>
>>> Hi Teena,
>>> That was quick!
>>> So.... is there a distinction between 'knowing' and 'custard pudding
>>> making'? And, how would you justify it?... and does the same
>>> form of
>>> justification apply to reasoning why cell phones are not capable of
>>> 'knowing' or containing 'knowledge'?
>> Terry
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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