I disagree with Chris Rust on a couple of points. As an acedemic I have
long argued that the value that we offer is the ability to consider, then
name, taxonomise and otherwise redefine. What is in a name is important if
your work is, for instance, helping industry realise benifits in theory.
Our recent work for the Design Council of the UK, has been largely about
definition. In this case what 'smart' or 'intelligent' products are or
could be. In order to settle on defnitions we worked closely with
practitioners and others in order to define what was and was not in this
category, and to reach some consensus about the category itself.
In a sense this links quite directly to the issue of context, and my second
point of disagreement. "context is all there is."
Things define and are defined by contexts. Any study or theory of context
is only relevant by defining limits to contexts, or deciding which elements
are relevant for a particular project or goal. How much is a particular
context relevant to defining meaning in an act or object? This is the aim
of contrasting the particular to the general, or the instance and the
category. Contexts within themseleves are potnaitlly infinate, and
therefore not defining them and their relevance to an act or thing is
surely a regressive frame of analysis. This surely confounds any sensible
disscusion of their relevance.
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