Dear colleagues and friends,
it is really a pleasure to have this discussion. Thanks to positivist
science (and technology) for being able to participate (via e-mail) while
sitting somewhere far out in the countryside enjoying this beautiful
summer.
To Ken Friedman:
Thanks a lot for this comprehensive lecture on Simon, Kuhn, etc. You will
get a copy of my Helsinki paper via snail-mail.
To Peter Lloyd:
I donīt know whether they talk about autopoiesis theory in the new Star
Wars movie. I have not seen it. But if so they (the film makers) are not as
far ahead of the state of the art as I expected them to be. I really think
that design, in its function as a scout or jester for society, can learn a
lot from the imaginative poietic capacity of the movie people.
To Harold Nelson:
You know that I like your systems approach (would like to learn more about
it!). Especially I think the vague idea of a dynamic "compositional
approach" has a great potential. It does not make sense trying to exclude
certain components but to think of design as an emerging new discipline on
the same level as science, art, the humanities, and, at the same time,
quite unique. And I like the concept of design being "relationship based
forming a social system based on service". More of that please!
To all:
A comment on the usefulness of critical theory for design taken from my
paper "On the foundations of a "science of the artidficial"" which will be
presented at UIAH Helsinki in September.
________________________________________
uncritical and amoral, but responsible
Design is uncritical, because it has to be. There is no and there has never
been a direct perception of the world. Instead we have the perception of
communication, the observation of observations (2nd order cybernetics). So
it becomes difficult or impossible to evaluate the representations of
reality by comparing them with reality itself. Pure criticism, whatever
that might be, is not really useful in the process. Where is the pivotal
point to evaluate what is good or bad? That means for some intellectuals:
their favourite toy, critical theory, will break. Criticism will be
replaced by performance. We have to focus on the process. Design can be
"critical" only in the sense that it illustrates different choices and puts
them to discussion. Design itself has no criteria that enable decisions as
to "good" or "bad" solutions.
We should think of replacing normativity (criticism) by "teleology"
(purpose orientation) and effectiveness. Rosenblueth and others (1943)
re-introduced the concept of teleology into science. The critical attitude
should better be transformed into an ironical attitude (Rorty 1989).
Phantasy, joke, provocation, intervention, etc. are elements of designīs
role as a modern court jester.
Design is amoral. The claim for ethics as a major criterion in design seems
to be off the point, a symptom of immaturity. Ethics should be kept
implicit in the process by using the appropriate methodical tools and
communicative styles. We need a moral disarmament of design in order to
become acceptable to other disciplines. Margolin (1998) criticizes Simonīs
(1996) definition of design as "transforming existing situations into
preferred ones" as "deceptively catholic". But can there be a more
challenging task than this? And a more responsible one? The main
characteristic of many approaches from the humanities, as e.g. "criticism",
is not their deepness or richness or whatever value but their fuzzyness and
uselessness in current practice. "Humanistic" attitudes are not really
useful in a time where the "human measure" is an increasingly inappropriate
criterion (information, nanotechnology, genetic technology, etc.). Only by
dropping idealistic and rigorous concepts of humanism will we be able to
work for real people in their individuality. It makes no sense at all to
work for "mankind" or for "the environment".
Design is responsible for what it is doing. Responsibility is only possible
if we do not retreat to moral positions. There was the time when designers
thought they would transfer real problems into real solutions. Today we
know that these are just codes indicating the starting point and the
endpoint of a project. It is more appropriate to talk about transferring
system state 1 into system state 2, always having in mind the complexity of
state 1 (perspectivity of problem design) and the contingency of state 2
(there are many possible states 2). Contingency is inherent in the process.
Responsibility is required to deal with this perspectivity in a democratic
manner, to support, for example, error-friendlyness. What we need are the
most advanced ("fashionable") communicative methods.
Designers cannot act as moral guards but rather as scouts, sometimes as
jesters, hopefully as respected partners in a network.
__________
Margolin, Victor (1998), History, Theory, and Criticism in Doctoral Design
Education. In: Proceedings of the Ohio Conference, oct. 1998 pp 197-206
Rorty, Richard (1989), Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge
University Press
Rosenblueth, Arturo; Wiener, Norbert; Bigelow, Julian (1943), Behavior,
Purpose and Teleology. In: Philosophy of Science Vol. 10 January 1943 No. 1
pp 18-24
Simon, Herbert A. (1969, 3rd ed. 1996), The Sciences of the Artificial.
Cambridge: MIT Press
________________________________________
Wolfgang Jonas
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