I take Clive's point to be somewhat accessed by asking:
- When does a designer stop believing (with their currently
much-celebrated empathetic optimism [Tim Brown et al[)
that there is a somewhere a super-inventive design solution?
When does the designer say 'no' to a design challenge?
Is proposing the 'no build option' still design? Saying 'no' is
something different from saying 'I can't (just now).'
Presumably saying 'no' to a design challenge shouldn't
just be a moment of private edification (in Rorty's sense),
but should itself be a (design?) project - to undertake to
convince others to not take up this challenge. Is this
politics still design (it is definitely not engineering?).
As Hans Jonas argues in relation to technological ethics,
it is a matter of actively resisting the core drive of techno-
science: because we can, we ought. It is the point that
Ulrich Beck put at the heart of his work on Risk Society:
what if we decide that we how we'd like to live is with no
level risk in relation to nuclear energy (or genetic engineer-
ing, etc), no matter how small? What does it mean for society
to say - we choose to no longer be convinced by your (techno-
rational) calculations of risk?
The Republicans get it. Is this not what the Upton-Inhofe
legislation to halt the capacity of the US EPA to regulate
greenhouse gas emissions also does? Isn't it also saying,
we actually don't give a stuff about science (or comprehensive
economics); we choose to live with polluting cheap energy
(aka Freedom)? At least designers can continue to make more
sexy gear.
Cameron
> One issues here is political. Should private companies be allowed to run
> such plants—when as we’ve seen spectacularly this year with the BP
> case—the companies instinct is both to cut costs to the bone and to
> abandon as rapidly as possible the site of its disasters? The point here
> is that such questions today demand to be brought into the total “design”
> process. Yet part of what we are talking about here is that while we are
> certainly talking in some ways here about “design” (this word referring
> to a configurational choice amongst alternatives) “design” is itself a
> completely inadequate term (with all the wrong associations) for the
> kind of process which needs to be undertaken. So we come back again to
> the question: what does it mean to “design” such plants? And what does
> the answer to that question tell us about the responsibilities and work
> of “design” as a whole?
>
> Clive
>
>
> Clive Dilnot
> Professor of Design Studies
> School of Art Design History and Theory
> Parsons School of Design,
> New School University.
> Room #731
> 2 E 16th St
> New York NY 10011
> e [log in to unmask]
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