(sorry about spelling howlers in the last version. the send  
instinct was out of synch)

Hi Jerry and keith,

I'm delighted that what I have said strikes a chord. But I want to  
both agree and disagree with you both, but for quite different reasons.

On 02/08/2007, at 8:20 AM, Jerry Diethelm wrote:

> It just seems to me that the consequences of being embedded,  
> situated and
> de-centered are more apparent today because of our postmodern  
> awareness.

I cannot speak for others, but my own experience of the 'post modern'  
was unrewarding. For some 10 years from 1975 to 85 I steeped myself  
in the post modern, read everything I could in the oeuvre. I spent  
one of those years at the Centre for Cultural Studies at Birmingham  
University with Stuart Hall and colleagues listening to the  
discussions, and participating in some of them. The outcome of that  
period was my book 'In search of semiotics'. Some would say that with  
that book I not only threw out the baby and the bath water, but the  
bath too! I remain unrepentant.

I'd like to point to four much more accessible texts, that preceded  
the post modern, which shaped my thinking about being embedded.

Abercrombie M L J 1960. The Anatomy of Judgment. London: Hutchinson.

Winch, P 1958. The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to  
Philosophy.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Evans-Pritchard  E 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the  
Azande. London: Faber and Faber.

Dahrendorf  R 1959. Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society.  
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

I commend them to you.

I would argue that the post-modern has added little to the insights  
already present in these works, other than a highly mannered  
obscurantist and obfuscatory form of writing that itself is a  
reinvention of the worst forms of medieaval scolasticism and hermetic  
thinking. (But that's just my point of view). I could say a great  
deal more about the post-modern, but I've had my turn. Keith sums it  
up well with  his phrase 'post-modern posing'

On 02/08/2007, at 9:03 AM, Keith Russell wrote:
> The awareness of being embedded, the apprehension of being situated,
> the consciousness of being de-centered - these are all significant
> experiential achievements that are rare.

I hope this is not the case, Keith, because we are in the business of  
teaching rather than hanging about waiting for the rare genetic  
mutation that lands a genius amongst us mere mortals.

I can point to a number of information designers and others I regard  
as friends and colleagues (and intellectuals) who I would describe as  
having an awareness of being 'embedded', and they practice their  
craft accordingly.

I can sometimes pinpoint the moment when students, and others, come  
to a realisation—a moment of epifeny—that they are seeing the world  
from an embedded position. This often happens to design students and  
designers when they undertake diagnostic testing of their own designs  
for the first time.

I could elaborate on this much more, but in the present context, I  
just want to suggest that this is something that can be taught and  
learnt from appropriate experience. If I did not believe that, I'd go  
back to romanticism and await the coming of the next design hero to  
emerge from the evolutionary swamp.

David