Dear Klaus,

I respectfully disagree. STS is much more than sociology/social science: it
is a complex assemblage of many different people coming from a variety of
backgrounds, some very applied and some only doing basic research. In my
humble opinion, there are too many attempts to change the world, especially
from designers, that are simply too eager to jump the gun, without really
understanding what is going on, that end in disaster. I think we need to
stop obssesing about inovating and slow down. Maintaining is sometimes as
important as changing. This is why, I sent some work from the Maintainers
in the past to the list: http://themaintainers.org

Second, and more importantly all applied field needs to have a healthy
balance between understanding and doing. In most, if not all classical
design fields, this balance is tilted towards doing, Successful medical and
psychological interventions are based on years of basic and applied
research. I see too many examples of "design interventions" that fail
simply because no serious and careful attempt has been made simply to
understand. For example, there are many "design for social innovation
projects" that do not even slightly mention years of solid sociological and
political science research about social movements, poverty, inequality etc.
and try to rediscover the wheel and change the "world" in a very short time
span.

You said "Design research needs to address what could happen when designers
and their stakeholders pull their intellectual and material resources
together and proposing something un precedented". In my opinion, if design
research only focuses on what you describe, it would be very unfortunate
for the future of the field.   Design research should not solely address
doing and changing. If anything, we need more STS, not less. Of course, I
do not claim to represent the majority opinion here :)

Yours,

ali

On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 20:50 Krippendorff, Klaus <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> STS is a sociology focused on explanations of how technology is integrated
> into social structures and facilitates or confines them. I found it very
> useful to know something about the social roles that technology has nd
> played in the past.
>
> However, all STStudies describe what happened in the past. Design research
> needs to address what could happen when designers and their stakeholders
> pull their intellectual and material resources together and proposing
> something un precedented. Design that doesn’t contribute to changing the
> very world that STS describes isn’t worth that name.
>
> Klaus
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>


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