Dear Listers
Don seems to have been eating lots of Australian fruit cake in the lead up to Christmas - very jolly. And, he's being as provocative as a sulphur crested cockatoo (they hang upside down and flop from the sky just for fun - and they make lots of noise).
If logic was invented (come upon) then so too was reasoning in that both are already available features of human consciousness. We'd also need to add such important things as sublimation, ratiocination and language as inventions. Which is fine by me but it certainly doesn't give us any better account of truth than we have in religion. And, I'm not sure what emetic advantage there is in describing any of these features of humanity as being artificial. My hands are, after this style of argument, artificial.
Plumbing, by the way, has always been a feature of reality on earth since the earth started to spin. So, I'm not quite sure what the point is in saying that it didn't exist as a trade until recently. If we mean taps (faucets) and threads and such stuff then who cares?
Design doesn't get any more important by claiming the territory of invention - it just gets sillier. It is the integration of the possibility of possibility into a culture of concern that gets my vote.
Now for fruit cake, port wine, and a fat cigar.
cheers to all
keith russell
OZ, newcastle
>>> Donald Norman <[log in to unmask]> 12/15/09 12:27 PM >>>
Nice try Jose, but i disagree
You are using logic. As I have to explain all the time, logic is an
artificial way of reasoning. It was invented. What you say makes good
sense But is it true?
I have not yet seen any example of your second case. Yes it could
happen. I argue that it never does. And, moreover I argue that it
can't, because the needs that some novel technology or device will
fulfill do not exist before the technology.
Notice, i did not say they were not discovered: I said they did not
even exist. Indoor plumbing was simply not a need 10,000 years ago.
Today it is a necessity.
So, if you disagree with me, do not use logic: cite a concrete example.
Don Norman
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