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Dear Ken, Maybe we are a millennium back in time ? Your comment brings back to my mind the status of monumental architecture a few centuries ago: cathedrals, major temples or cities... The master architect, as well as the person that commissioned the monument, was unlikely to see the construction achieved. It was one of the reasons why the guilds were so closed : ensuring the "continuity" of the initial project, at a time where drafting and structural analysis was in its debut. It is also one of the roots (in my opinion) of the distinction between design (as an intentional project which value is rooted in its representation/symbolic potential —potential because it is not yet executed and experienced) and design (as the instructions to execute, be it organisation of work, sketching, etc.). The transmission had to be very special... not so different actually from what happens when you have to deal with maintaining or dismantling large pieces of equipment... an interesting topic for/ about design, but not really investigated. Best regards, Jean Le 10 juin 11 à 09:13, Ken Friedman a écrit : Goran Roos gave a talk here today in which he explained the challenge -- and problem -- of design. We are in a field where knowledge (or at least information) doubles every three or four years, but we work in a world where knowledge (or at least information) in technology doubles every eighteen months. To place this in perspective, over the next year and a half, we will create as much information again in technology as the human race has created in our entire history up to this point. This makes designing and planning rather perilous, especially in fields where we build massive, billion-dollar plants with a five-year planning, investment, and construction horizon for plants where we effectively don't know what we will finally manufacture. It also makes educating students difficult, when the software packages and skills we teach are sometimes obsolete before our students graduate.