> On 7 Jul 2016, at 7:36 AM, Krippendorff, Klaus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I don't have the time right now to respond as lengthily as I would like to. Just to say that I agree with yoad's post.
> We have been there before, Terry. Mathematics is a language you can handle only after you've learned to communicate naturally. It does not grow on trees nor can it be separated from what mathematicians have done for some time. Didn't you learn mathematics from teachers or texts?
>
> Klaus
>
> Sent from my iPhone
Klause and all,
I have no authority to do so, but I would like too see an end to Terry bashing for a range of reasons. Having been a Terry basher, I was deeply shocked and ashamed when I stood back and reflected on my own violence.
I now find remarks like
> Terry. Mathematics is a language you can handle only after you've learned to communicate naturally. It does not grow on trees nor can it be separated from what mathematicians have done for some time. Didn't you learn mathematics from teachers or texts?
deeply patronising and offensive. It’s like the baying of a dog inviting the other dogs on the block to join in a chorus of dislike and contempt. Enough!
There is also another reason. Terry’s posts seem to act as a trigger for those on this list who have more recently ‘discovered’ the ‘nature of language’ to affirm their faith in the ‘force’ and cast out the ‘dark side’. As if the act of asserting the ‘truth' was in itself enough: a satisfying declaration of the true faith. Well, it isn’t. At least not for me.
Round about 1975, a lot of things came together for me and a small community of information designers. I have published extensively about this—papers, books, conference presentations, university teaching, paid design projects, etc. Those of us involved, in the information design community, started a new type of work and way of thinking. I have been in the privileged position of being able to articulate our collective inventions and discoveries.
Since then I have been developing with others the basis of a new (in 1975) type of design processes and thinking which built on all the work that preceded us, but building something that was totally new. Again, many of us have written about this and produced many case histories that in themselves led to new methods and ways of thinking. I have been privileged throughout this time in being able to continue to articulate descriptions and explanations of our emerging craft.
BTW, most of this work has been unknown outside of information design ID), particularly among those—many on this list—who ‘reinvented’ some of the basic changes in thinking that took place, as if it was part of some avant-garde, a new way of thinking about design. Well it was in the 1960’s, but not now. The only thing that is new is the much louder chorus of true believers.
One of the reasons it may have happened in (ID) earlier is because our work intimately revolves around language use. We were seeing empirically what others were only theorising. But that is another thread altogether.
For now, I simply want to suggest to this list of highly educated and learned people that we need to move beyond the recitation and regurgitating of past arguments and move into a much more nuanced space of dialogue.
I find the comments by Kyle, the Launching the Decolonising Design group, Luiza, and Jinan among the most important and refreshing on this list for a long time, not least because they speak from clearly articulated, POSITIONS. They join us in the reality of creating new methods for articulating a logic of positions through which we relate to each other. Welcome!
I would like to share with you one of the earliest metaphors I used to try and capture what we are grappling with. I hope you find it useful.
> …it has become apparent that the [Communication] landscape is subtly deformed or changed by the presence of those within it. It is as if the contours of the landscape stretch and distend around anyone who walks across it.…
>
> The landscape of communication is more like the surface of a giant trampoline than terra firma. When a trampoline yields as we walk across it the feeling may be one of uncontrollable and hence chaotic movement but we know that the trampoline is obeying ‘ strict physical laws of elasticity which do not change. The regularity is simply at a level which as walkers we have not yet grasped. In shifting from the metaphor of a landscape to that of a giant trampoline I am trying to convey a sense of the level at which order and perhaps truth is to be found.
In Search of Semiotics (1986) (btw at the time of writing, the title was meant to be ironic)
I suspect there is a kind of correlation between the ‘weight’ of white northern professors (of which I am a close relative) and the depth to which they sink, distending the trampoline, so that they cannot see anyone else beyond their little pit, and have no capacity to imagine the many landscapes that others inhabit.
David
--
blog: http://communication.org.au/blo <http://communication.org.au/blo>g/
web: http://communication.org.au <http://communication.org.au/>
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •
Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
Phone: +61 (03) 9005 5903
Skype: davidsless
60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068
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