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On 19 Feb 2006, at 11:05 pm, Rust, Chris wrote: >> 8. How to solve or to avoid major problems created by the culture we >> create and inhabit?< > > JCJ's discussion of this question, and even his posing it, reveal a > kind of idealism that worries me because it serves both a self-image > of the designer as somebody who can fix the world if only they were > given the contract and a modernist belief that the world can be fixed. This seems to me a misapprehension of JCJ's later work, which I would describe as precisely a dismantling of the 'self image of the designer as someone who can fix the world' See 'Designing Designing' 1984 and 'The Internet and Everyone' 2000. His posing of the question, and the answer to it seem to me to be a rhetorical device pointing to the very impracticality of the traditional 'Modernist' notion of design and its place in society. > I'm a little disappointed that he has actually not come very far since > the 1970s, his gadgets may have changed (systems analysis then, a > non-specialist culture in which computers are the specialists now) but > the ideals are the same. > > And the language of "designers would be paid not to...researchers > would be paid to....designers and researchers would be required > to..." is astonishing. . . . again, because its intended to show the cumbersome complexity of such an approach? Don't miss the nod to Blake in the opening lines about the 'voice of reason' and the 'voice of intuition'. Like Blake JCJ uses 'multiple voices' -fictional (and sometimes real) characters that personify different mindsets, (agents?) and sets them to argue and debate among themselves. The real future he proposes is undescribable except perhaps by his mantra of 'depending on everyone' because it is about an open ended creative process -the only role of the 'computernets' is to facilitate this. In other words he favours 'open source' development of open ended creativity . . . Idealism -probably, but then while we may not want to 'fix' the world, we still want to make a difference? At any rate, unless I've really missed something, JCJ is not about 'Big Brother' but about how to take him apart . . . Oh, and yes -declaration of interest: I am biassed: I enjoyed some correspondence with him a few years ago, and he was nice enough to give me a walk-on part in one of his written debates . . . Andrew