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PHD-DESIGN  September 2014

PHD-DESIGN September 2014

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Subject:

Re: automation: Design as human agency

From:

Klaus Krippendorff <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 06:44:48 +0000

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to add to ken's assessment, I think you, terry, have a strange conception of human beings. of course we have bodies, we do many things routinely and habitually. this is part of being an agent. how could we act otherwise. all the materialities that support our being can hardly be separated from who we are as living beings. 



besides the ground on which we walk and what our hands touch and alter, there is one thing you consistently ignore to the point at which I start thinking that you are unaware of being in language. 



you once insisted that design theory does not require language both to state the theory and to explain what designers do. I asked you to back up your claim by showing me a theory without the use of language. I am still waiting for you to step out of the box you seem to live in. 



speaking of design theory, you always write as if everyone does or should know exactly what you have in mind. why don't you give us your design theory so that we all know whether it has has some merits in informing that practice. (and don't use language!!!)



klaus





Sent from my iPhone



> On Sep 23, 2014, at 14:37, "Ken Friedman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 

> Dear Terry,

> 

> You are confused about the issue of design and agency. At some point, I will address your three one-sentence definitions to explain why they remain circular and inadequate. When Klaus last wrote, I thought that would do it for me today, but your note to Gunnar, Carlos, and Lubomir brought me back to a simple problem that is not handled well in your commentary.

> 

> For the past few years, you have had a tendency to make strong statements and grand claims, but you don’t provide the evidence for your claims and you don’t make an extended argument. In most of your comments, you simply repeat your strong statement, followed by a repeated claim that your assertion offers theoretical and empirical advantages. You don’t actually demonstrate the evidence that supports these claims. 

> 

> This is the way it seems to go on nearly every topic you address. You’d should us how designers can get the maths education they need, how your proposals offer theoretical and empirical advantages, and how your position would revolutionise design research …. if only you had time and the peer reviewed journals were not …. well, most of us know the drill.

> 

> Am I to assume that you would offer your work to peer-reviewed journals if the reviewing were done by machines?

> 

> As far as this concept of agency, there is a simple problem. Gunnar addressed it to some degree. The problem is this:

> 

> Machines, computer programs, tools, and artefacts embody the concepts, plans, projects, programs, and specifications of the designers, engineers, and manufacturers who create them.

> 

> If a musician uses GarageBand, it is not “GarageBand” that co-creates the music as an independent agent. Rather, the GarageBand program helps the musician to create music because the musician uses the instructions and skills that the designers, engineers, and creators of GarageBand designed into the program. It is the human beings who created GarageBand whose agency assists the human beings that use such tools. The tools themselves are not agents and they do not possess agency.

> 

> If you are going to explain to us that we must attend to serious philosophical issues, the you, yourself, ought properly to examine and work properly with the philosophical problems you raise.

> 

> Your argument rests on a series of slippages in meaning. The elisions in meaning seemingly support your argument — but only if you forget that human beings create tools with affordances. Human designers create the affordances that assist other human beings who use those tools. Affordances are not a sign of mechanical or digital or artifactual agency. Rather, they are the expression of human agency in the designed artefacts that human beings create.    

> 

> Machines, computer programs, and other tools play a part in design activity, but they do not design and they are not designers. 

> 

> At this point, I will end with a preference. I don’t claim this preference as “reality” or a “fact,” as you so often claim, but my own preference. Rather than being labeled as "an old heavy oil tanker heading full steam for the cliffs,” I’d rather think of myself as Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate. Or possibly Russell Crowe in Robin Hood. But I do not think of myself as a machine, neither a heavy oil tanker nor a computer program. And I am not a designer who confuses himself with a machine by imagining that machines design.

> 

> Yours,

> 

> Ken

> 

> Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University Press | Launching in 2015 

> 

> Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia ||| Visiting Professor | UTS Business School | University of Technology Sydney University | Sydney, Australia 

> 

> Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn 

> 

> Telephone: International +46 480 51514 — In Sweden (0) 480 51514 — iPhone: International +46 727 003 218 — In Sweden (0) 727 003 218

> 

> Terry Love wrote:

> 

> —snip—

> 

> As Lubomir wrote, things get a bit philosophical. This is in the sense of  first putting aside the biases for particular modes of theory that come with being human, then looking in careful detail at the contributions of humans and other things to design activity, which  has often up to now been regarded as an intrinsically human process. There are two simple tests that can make a start. The first  is via null hypothesis of whether design activity is always undertaken by humans with no involvement or dependency anything else other than humans. The second is whether there are any examples of design activity or parts of design activity that have been presumed to be undertaken by humans but have been in fact undertaken by or resulting from the action of non-human inputs.  

> 

> —snip—

> 

> 

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