Apologies, didn’t mean to post to list on that.
M
On Mon, Oct 19, 2020 at 5:17 PM Mitchell Sipus <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Hey Ronni,
> So few of us contribute to the listserv. For some unknown reason, I felt a
> compulsion to just share some thoughts and not hold back. Seems to be a
> hit! Ha! Didn’t see that coming.
>
> Great to make your acquaintance. What are you working on these days?
>
> Mitch
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2020 at 11:27 AM Ronni Rosenberg <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> thank you so much for sharing this wonderful essay
>>
>> Ronni Rosenberg
>>
>> > On Oct 19, 2020, at 8:00 AM, Ken Friedman <
>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> >
>> > Dear Mitch (and All),
>> >
>> > The thread on avant-garde design research has given rise to a great
>> deal of off-list conversation. After my last post, several notes pointed me
>> to books that exemplify the kind of research in William Nordhaus’s article.
>> One example is Craeft by Alexander Langlands (2019).
>> >
>> > Your latest post — copied below — raises a profound question:
>> >
>> > How we can increase research of the kind we see in Nordhaus (1998)?
>> >
>> > The term "avant-garde" began in the military with the description of
>> the advance guard of an army, breaking new territory and taking the lead in
>> conquest. The Oxford English Dictionary (2020) defines avant-garde as "1.
>> The foremost part of an army the vanguard or van. 2. The pioneers or
>> innovators in any art in a particular period. Also attributive or as adj.”
>> While the military usage has become less common over the years, the concept
>> of leadership and breakthrough remains. Where the avant-garde leads, the
>> rest follow. The original usage dates in English to the late 1400s. While
>> the usage shifted to the arts and humanities, the concepts of leadership,
>> direction, and progress remain central. The current usage dates to the
>> 1800s.
>> >
>> > Merriam-Webster’s (2020) defines the avant-garde in its current usage
>> as “an intelligentsia that develops new or experimental concepts especially
>> in the arts.” It gives several synonyms: advanced, avant, cutting-edge,
>> progressive, and state-of-the-art.
>> >
>> > The concept of the avant-garde is that of genuine conceptual
>> development. Simply proposing a new idea is not enough. A real avant-garde
>> influences its field with a genuine contribution. We may debate the nature
>> of genuine contributions in any field — in the arts, ambiguity and critical
>> reception make it far more difficult to determine the nature of an
>> important contribution than may be the case in the sciences. Even in the
>> sciences, however, many research findings lead to extensive debate. The
>> hope is that the result of this debate leads to deeper understanding in the
>> field and better answers to the research questions we ask.
>> >
>> > This is the hallmark of William Nordhaus’s work. Nordhaus often has
>> bold ideas — and he developed the technical skill to bring his bold ideas
>> to fruition. The article on lighting is only one example. In 2002, for
>> example, Nordhaus once again returned to what he described as “Mesopotamian
>> economics” to estimate the cost of a war in Iraq before the war began.
>> Nordhaus (2002) estimated that such a war would cost up to 1.9 trillion
>> dollars. While this exceeded projections and estimates from the Bush
>> administration, it was remarkably accurate — and close to the 2007
>> estimates of the Congressional Budget Office (Reuters Staff 2007)
>> >
>> > Nordhaus returned to the topic of lighting a few years later with
>> another groundbreaking article, “Using luminosity data as a proxy for
>> economic statistics.” (Xi and Nordhaus 2011: 8589–8594). Together with Xi
>> Chen, he also developed the massive G-Econ research project, “devoted to
>> developing a geophysically based data set on economic activity for the
>> world.”
>> >
>> > Nordhaus’s capacity to generate avant-garde research rests on the
>> technical mastery and advanced research skills that permit him to carry out
>> his bold ideas. Nordhaus starts with sometimes astonishing hypotheses. He
>> ends with evidence and a sound argument to demonstrate that the hypotheses
>> are valid, correct, or useful. Or — as scientists often learn — he
>> discovers that they may not be valid, correct, or useful. In either case,
>> the research contributes to the field.
>> >
>> > Another great example of avant-garde research was Albert Einstein’s
>> (1998 [1905]) paper on Brownian motion. You can see it in John Stachel’s
>> great collection of Einstein’s five papers in Einstein’s Miraculous Year.
>> (For a short summary, see: APS News 2020)
>> >
>> > In 1905, the idea of atomic theory was still an open question in the
>> discipline of physics. When Einstein wrote his paper on Brownian motion,
>> many physicists did not believe in the physical reality of atomic theory.
>> Some conceded that the idea of the atom made heuristic sense because it
>> made physical calculations easier — but they felt nevertheless that the
>> notion of the atom was itself incorrect or unproven.
>> >
>> > To examine the question of atomic theory as a physical fact, Einstein
>> went back to the observation of Brownian motion. Robert Brown was the
>> Scottish botanist who had described the phenomenon of small random
>> fluctuations in liquid media in 1827. Einstein began with this, arguing
>> from carefully observed empirical data. He used well known facts. Some were
>> so well established that he didn’t even need citations: these were well
>> established facts on which all physicists and chemists agreed. From facts
>> that everyone had seen and to which everyone assented, Einstein argued that
>> one must conclude that atoms are a physical reality. What made this paper
>> an example of avant-garde research is Einstein’s ability to use facts that
>> everyone had seen and on which everyone agreed to settle a heated
>> controversy at the heart of his discipline.
>> >
>> > When editor Max Planck — who would himself win the Nobel Prize —
>> published this paper in the journal Annalen der Physik, many physicists
>> disagreed. Within a few years after the paper appeared, the entire field of
>> physics had accepted atomic theory as a physical reality.
>> >
>> > Physicist Jeremy Bernstein (1993:15) wrote an interesting article that
>> effectively asks how to distinguish avant-garde research from nonsense.
>> >
>> > “The year is 1905. I am a professor of physics at the University of
>> Bern. For many years I have been teaching probably from the same set of
>> notes respectable courses based on what is for me the familiar and
>> comfortable physics of the nineteenth century. I teach the mechanics of
>> Newton the relatively modern theories of electricity and magnetism of James
>> Clerk Maxwell along with good solid nineteenth-century thermodynamics. I
>> believe that atoms exist although I am troubled occasionally by the
>> question that around the turn of the century Ernst Mach asked Ludwig
>> Boltzmann: ‘Have you seen one?’ All in all it is a good comfortable life.
>> Then with no warning at all a series of physics papers begins arriving in
>> the mail. They carry the return address of the Swiss National Patent Office
>> in Bern. The covering letter identifies their author as a patent examiner
>> -- a technical expert ‘third class’ — of whom I have never heard. He does
>> not even have a doctoral title. Upon browsing through the papers I discover
>> that this doctorless unknown is claiming — using totally unfamiliar kinds
>> of reasoning — that essentially all of the physics I have been teaching is
>> wrong. Not just wrong in a few minor details but fundamentally wrong. What
>> would my reaction be? What should it have been? In short how could I then
>> have known that the author of these papers — the twenty-six-year-old Albert
>> Einstein was not a crank?”
>> >
>> > Bernstein answers the question through the course of the article.
>> Toward the end, he notes “All of us who have tried to work in a deep
>> science know just how hard it is to get to the frontier — just how much
>> devoted training is involved. Even Einstein went through this
>> apprenticeship. The notes he took in H. F. Weber's l887-88 lectures at the
>> Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich still exist. They are the notes
>> of a conscientious student with a clear understanding of the physics that
>> preceded his own.” (Bernstein 1993: 27)
>> >
>> > While Bernstein doesn’t use the term “avant-garde research,” he does
>> speak of the research frontier. He proposes several criteria that
>> distinguish crank research from the genuine avant-garde. Interesting,
>> Bernstein first discusses the avant-garde in art, literature, and music,
>> giving three well known examples, Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel
>> Duchamp, Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, and 4’33” by John Cage. For
>> avant-garde research, Bernstein (1993:17-23) offers two central criteria,
>> correspondence and predictiveness.
>> >
>> > Correspondence, for Bernstein (1993:18) states “that any proposal for a
>> radically new theory in physics or in any other science contain a clear
>> explanation of why the precedent science worked. What new domain of
>> experience is being explored by the new science and how does it meld with
>> the old?” He describes this as “an important benchmark for distinguishing
>> real science from its imitations.”
>> >
>> > The “second criterion that genuine science should satisfy is
>> predictiveness. Real scientific ideas cry out to be tested in laboratories.
>> Einstein’s 1905 papers are ... full of predictions.” (Bernstein 1993:20)
>> >
>> > There is no single criterion that applies to every form of serious
>> research. For example, Nordhaus’s 1998 paper on light makes no predictions.
>> It is nevertheless possible to measure his claims against the real world:
>> this measurement takes the place of prediction.
>> >
>> > Avant-garde research may not reveal great truths of change the course
>> of science. From time to time, we find charming minor cases of avant-garde
>> research. The New York Times recently reported an intriguing physics paper.
>> Even though the problem is minor, involving the conservation of angular
>> momentum in the spin of a football forward pass, the science was difficult.
>> Physicists worked on the problem for several decades to find the answer.
>> (Chang 2020. See also: Price 2020)
>> >
>> > Design is filled with problems that call for solutions. Some are minor.
>> Some involve the daily flow of work. While some design involves creating or
>> inventing things that don’t yet exist, a great deal of design involves
>> redesign — and massive amounts of design work involve applying existing
>> design solutions in different yet predictable circumstances. A case in
>> point is the situation in which working designers execute a corporate
>> design program across signage, stationery, packaging, press releases, and
>> advertisements. Once the corporate design program is established, it may be
>> used across thousands of different items that are reproduced in tens of
>> millions of examples. None of this is avant-garde.
>> >
>> > But design also entails serious problems where avant-garde research
>> might well generate new, useful, and surprising solutions. That’s what
>> Mitch looks for when he writes: “...we should not be afraid to be more
>> accountable to one another or to challenge our future selves. Rather, we
>> should be emboldened.”
>> >
>> > What do we need to do if we are to be accountable and to challenge our
>> future selves to engage in genuinely avant-garde research? This kind of
>> work requires technical mastery — the work of a Nordhaus, an Einstein, or
>> the team of Price, Moss and Gay.
>> >
>> > In my view, there are four key factors that will make a difference. The
>> first two challenges we face involve training researchers with the capacity
>> for avant-garde research. This requires mastery, and it requires providing
>> people with the kind of education that will engender the understanding that
>> leads to correspondence.
>> >
>> > To achieve this, we must improve the quality of doctoral education and
>> the quality of doctoral supervision.
>> >
>> > The second two factors involve the articles that convey our research,
>> and the way we handle articles in our journals.
>> >
>> > To achieve this, we must teach better research writing skills, and we
>> must improve the quality of journal reviewing.
>> >
>> > There are many more issues to consider — but until we develop a strong
>> corps of researchers, we will have difficulty with an avant-garde. The
>> original idea of the avant-garde involved an army corps able to send a
>> vanguard force into new territory — perhaps to scout, perhaps to engage the
>> lead elements of the opposing force that constitutes an army’s “problem.”
>> The concept of avant-garde research requires a well trained, competent
>> corps of researchers able to scout, to forage, and to address challenges in
>> a serious way.
>> >
>> > We are developing good young researchers, but nowhere near enough of
>> them. In comparison with fields such as economics or physics, we produce
>> very few PhD graduates. But a second issue comes up. There is more involved
>> than the number of graduates. Very few PhD graduates in economics go on to
>> win a Nobel Prize as Nordhaus did. There have been tens of thousands of PhD
>> graduates in the different fields of economics — even more graduates in the
>> fields of philosophy, mathematics, and the social sciences in which Nobel
>> laureates in economics have studied. Of these, only 86 individuals have won
>> the Nobel Prize. What makes the difference is a field large enough with
>> enough solid PhD programs to provide a corps from which a vanguard can
>> emerge. (Since the late 1800s, there have been several hundred thousand PhD
>> graduates in physics, physical chemistry, biophysics, mathematical physics,
>> mathematics, and related fields. Of these, 215 individuals have won the
>> Nobel Prize in physics.) We simply do not have enough excellent PhD
>> programs in design that ensure that every graduate possesses the basic
>> skills required for competent research. While we have more good PhD
>> graduates than ever before, the explosion of doctoral programs means that
>> they are a tiny fraction of the PhD degrees awarded in different design
>> fields. Without a large corps of competent researchers, we cannot hope for
>> an avant-garde able to generate bold ideas and push them forward to achieve
>> a contribution. We lack what sports coaches call a deep bench.
>> >
>> > When we have built the field out enough to generate more avant-garde
>> research based on skill and mastery, then we come to the question of
>> writing it up and getting it published. At this point, I’ve written far
>> more than I originally planned to write, so I’ll save that for another day.
>> >
>> > Warm wishes,
>> >
>> > Ken
>> >
>> > —
>> >
>> > References
>> >
>> > APS News. 2005. American Physical Society News February 2005, Vol. 14,
>> No. 2. “This Month in Physics History: Einstein and Brownian Motion” URL:
>> https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200502/history.cfm <
>> https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200502/history.cfm> Accessed
>> 2020 October 18.
>> >
>> > Bernstein Jeremy. 1993. “How Can We Be Sure That Albert Einstein Was
>> Not A Crank?” Cranks Quarks and the Cosmos. New York: Basic Books. pp.
>> 15-27. (A copy will be available at this URL through November 1:
>> https://www.academia.edu/44325878/Bernstein_1997_Einstein_Crank <
>> https://www.academia.edu/44325878/Bernstein_1997_Einstein_Crank> )
>> >
>> > Chang, Kenneth. 2020. “Why a Perfect Spiral Football Pass Doesn’t Break
>> the Laws of Physics.” New York Times. URL:
>> > https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/science/football-pass-physics.html <
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/science/football-pass-physics.html>
>> Accessed 2020 October 19.
>> >
>> > Einstein, Albert. 1998. [1905]. “Einstein on Brownian Motion.”
>> Including the reprint text of “On the Motion of Small Particles Suspended
>> in Liquids at Rest Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat.” In
>> Einstein’s Miraculous Year. Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics.
>> Edited and Introduced by John Stachel. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
>> University Press, pp. 73-98.
>> >
>> > Langlands, Alexander. 2019. Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True
>> Meaning of Traditional Crafts. New York: W. W. Norton.
>> >
>> > Merriam-Webster’s Online. 2020. “Avant-Garde.” URL:
>> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/avant-garde <
>> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/avant-garde> Accessed 2020
>> October 18.
>> >
>> > Nordhaus, William D. 1998. Do Real-Output and Real-Wage Measures
>> Capture Reality? The History of Lighting Suggests Not. Cowles Foundation
>> Paper No. 957. New Haven, Connecticut: Cowles Foundation for Economic
>> Research at Yale University. Originally published in: The Economics of New
>> Goods, edited by Timothy F. Bresnahan and Robert J. Gordon. 1997. National
>> Bureau of Economic Research Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 58, Chicago:
>> University of Chicago Press, pp. 29-70. Available at URL:
>> https://www.nber.org/chapters/c6064.pdf <
>> https://www.nber.org/chapters/c6064.pdf> Date accessed 2020 October 15.
>> >
>> > Nordhaus, William D. 2002. The Economic Consequences of a War with
>> Iraq. Working Paper 9361. Cambridge, Massachusetts: National Bureau of
>> Economic Research. URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9361 <
>> http://www.nber.org/papers/w9361> Accessed: 2020 October 18.
>> >
>> > Nordhaus, William. 2020. The G-Econ Project. URL:
>> https://sites.google.com/site/williamdnordhaus/gecon <
>> https://sites.google.com/site/williamdnordhaus/gecon> Accessed 2020
>> October 18.
>> >
>> > Oxford English Dictionary Online. 2020. “Avant-garde.” URL:
>> https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/13610 <
>> https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/13610> Accessed 2020 October 18.
>> >
>> > Price, Richard H., William C. Moss, and T.J. Gay. 2020. “The paradox of
>> the tight spiral pass in American football: Insights from an analytic
>> approximate solution.” American Journal of Physics, Vol. 88, p. 753 (2020)
>> DOI: https://doi.org/10.1119/10.0001632 <
>> https://doi.org/10.1119/10.0001632>
>> >
>> > Reuters Staff. 2007. “U.S. CBO estimates $2.4 trillion long-term war
>> costs.” October 24, 2007. URL:
>> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-usa-funding-idUSN2450753720071024
>> <
>> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-usa-funding-idUSN2450753720071024>
>> Accessed 2020 October 18.
>> >
>> > Xi, Chen and William D. Nordhaus. 2011. “Using luminosity data as a
>> proxy for economic statistics.” Proceedings of the National Academy of
>> Science, May 24, 2011, Vol. 108, No. 21, pp. 8589–8594 DOI:
>> www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1017031108 <
>> http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1017031108>
>> >
>> > —
>> >
>> > Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji.
>> The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji
>> University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL:
>> http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
>> <
>> http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
>> >
>> >
>> > Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and
>> Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Visiting Professor |
>> Faculty of Engineering | Lund University ||| Email
>> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> |
>> Academia https://tongji.academia.edu/KenFriedman <
>> https://tongji.academia.edu/KenFriedman> | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
>> <http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn/>
>> >
>> > —
>> >
>> > Mitch Sipus wrote:
>> >
>> > —snip—
>> >
>> > Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm thrilled you see the light (ahem), as Nordhaus's
>> 1998 publication is a sublime example of what we, as designers, could
>> accomplish through our own research. In his own words, "making a complete
>> reckoning of the impact of new and improved consumer goods on our living
>> standards is an epic task." He is not alone in the pursuit. We are here
>> too.
>> >
>> > But are we equipped for the task?
>> >
>> > An interesting aspect of Nordhaus's work on light, was that he
>> revitalized perhaps the most ancient and banal economic indicator, the
>> price value of labor. Nordhaus needed a creative solution to correlate and
>> project the impact of product design to society, and the price value of
>> labor - though a roughly hewn measure - enabled him to make projections
>> both backward and forward in time. It is here, through the weaving of
>> creativity, materiality, classical economics and longitudinal thinking that
>> I find the work to be just short of bliss. Yet it also shows that the
>> economists have an advantage here... and we could perhaps borrow a little
>> of their approach in our own scholarship.
>> >
>> > While design research can be liberating in its future-forward focus as
>> the 'science of the artificial,' I have long found it difficult to
>> extrapolate the greater implications of most research efforts. The great
>> variance across research products can be refreshing, but the more
>> dissertations I’ve read in the field, the less certain I am to define it.
>> The third leg, as Ken describes of the scientific method, is a rigor in
>> research design made possible partly because assessment criteria are
>> formulated via the initial stages of observation. We have many frameworks,
>> but we do not have shared modular units of assessment criteria equivalent
>> to the price-value of labor. As we design forward - projecting new concepts
>> into the world through making things - what do we have of common standards,
>> units and criteria for assessment? Do we have an approach to build
>> criteria? If so, do we share common standards and tactics to transition
>> knowledge across silos of research? I argue that we do not, and this
>> undermines the maturation of our field as a research discipline.
>> >
>> > Industry, today, tends to rely on criteria such usability,
>> accessibility, or adoption - these have a clear footing in the demands of
>> business. We also see modules emerge in technical research settings - like
>> the 7 point Likert scale or the Technology Readiness Scale (TRL). But in
>> the domain of more academic design research that touches humanities,
>> environmentalism, and social change - what are the measures? What are the
>> demands of our research community? Suddenly the conversation explodes to
>> topics like frameworks or big debates on what is design. Frameworks for
>> sustainability and social justice abound. Design is this and that. Every
>> PhD has a framework. This can be all well and good, but note, Nordhaus
>> wasn’t assessing light as a moral object or relying on a philosophical
>> framework. His work was powerful because the assessment was granular.
>> Equipped with the labor function, he could examine how a set of product
>> iterations changed the history of human labor, and by extension, the
>> quality of life over time – thus satisfying the greater demand of his
>> research field.
>> >
>> > So I question, by what means can we also systematically extrapolate
>> upon the findings of design research with a little more precision and a
>> little less preference? There are probably 70,000 design frameworks
>> created in the last 50 years that sit on dusty shelves - so maybe we too,
>> can take the risk to get more granular? This does not sound like a popular
>> sentiment, yet granularity also demands accountability, driving our field
>> to do better research and to generate stronger research. Research that
>> moves mountains.
>> >
>> > We might all agree that transportation design for example, is not
>> merely about aesthetics, or about miles per gallon in an era of climate
>> change. To design forward, can we thus borrow and build forward leading
>> measures of impact by which we can compare our designs across the whole
>> span of categories? Be it the years of sunlight captured in fossil fuels,
>> the carbon units that deplete the atmosphere, or the impact on human
>> lifespan distributed across our future generations via the scalar
>> modification of automobile infrastructure? In contrast, I've heard 15
>> years of critiques about various sustainable design works "lacking a
>> certain soulfulness." What does that even mean?
>> >
>> > More broadly, are we yet in a position - as a community - to carry out
>> the work, to build some standardized and shared evaluatory mechanisms of
>> design in the world, through which we build a more rigorous research
>> discipline? Of course, that isn't something to which everyone would agree
>> that we need, or should pursue. Yet without such an approach, how can one
>> really justify any body of research in design as avant garde or not avant
>> garde? Like Ken, we can examine the rigour of structure and method. But to
>> look at such work and make inferences on how it matters in the universe? We
>> suddenly default to the artistic tradition of speculative critique.
>> >
>> > Decades ago, the notion of design as a research field was awkward and
>> poorly defined. No doubt the argument that we should together build and
>> commit to future-looking indicators to better assess ourselves, and our
>> works, perhaps generates the same feelings. But we should not be afraid to
>> be more accountable to one another or to challenge our future selves.
>> Rather, we should be emboldened.
>> > —snip—
>> >
>> > --
>> >
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