Dear Don and all,
My primary concern is to ascertain how we can develop more
sustainable ways of living and working. No-one except US Re-
publican presidential candidates should now doubt that this
will require radical innovation. There is much dispute at the
moment as to whether the level of innovation now needed can
come only from technological innovation or only from social
innovation. (I like John Thackara's claim that sustainability
requires not 'science fiction' but 'social fiction' - something we
seem to be not-so-good-at.) I am therefore particularly inter-
ested to determine what, for instance, meaning-driven inno-
vation might be, and what the role of (social) research (and
not citation) might be within meaning-driven innovation.
In your and Verganti's piece you define meaning-driven
innovation as follows:
"Meaning-driven innovation starts from the comprehension of subtle and unspoken dynamics in socio-cultural models and results in radically new meanings and languages, often implying a change in socio-cultural regimes. The invention of the mini-skirt in the 1960s is an example: not simply a different skirt, but a radically new symbol of women’s freedom that recognize a radical change in society. No new technology was involved."
Was the miniskirt an 'invention' or an evolution? Was it a
'new symbol of women's freedom'? If it was, was this a symbol
invented by the women who wore the skirt, or a symbol in-
vented by the marketers of the mini-skirt which women either
willingly or unwillingly took up? Is the miniskirt-as-women's-
freedom an innovation or is it a socio-technical evolution in
the practices of being a woman, for better or worse? Is any-
one in control of these kinds of innovations/evolutions,
whether 3M or Vivian Westwood? If not, if there is only an
evolving network of coalescing technologies and meanings,
is radical innovation ever possible? Perhaps things only look
disruptive in retrospect when a new paradigm more-or-less
normalizes for a while, making the arrangements of the past
look strange. In which case, perhaps it is conceptual mistake
to try to distinguish between technologies and their meanings.
Or perhaps this is just the sought of social research that func-
tionally fixes the technological as a kind of capitalist alienation.
Cameron
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