Dear Francois and Klauss
Context forms our beingness!
People in indigenous non literate communities do not have the concept of
‘waste’ nor do they have a word meaning 'waste'.
They do not WASTE and they use whatever comes in their way. So the
children living in this cognitive space do not learn about waste. An
attitude of recycling (with out having this word) is built due to them.
Most traditional craft practices exhibits this quality.
But in urban situation we have in our living space itself a basket named
‘waste paper basket’ and this situation teaches the child (us) about
wasting. That there is something called waste and they can waste etc. The
products in modern space creates our behavior.(I am studying some thing
called natural ergonomics to understand the body's natural ease with out
products)
The cyclic nature of Nature forms the being-ness of the indigenous people
as nature itself is their cognitive source where as linearity of modern man
comes from the linear context in which he lives. The context includes not
only materials but also language. There are several words that indicate
linearity in modern use of language which is absent in indigenous languages.
Jinan,
'DIGITAL MEDIUM IS A TOOL.DIGITALLY MEDIATED KNOWLEDGE DESTROYS THE BEING'
http://sadhanavillageschool.org/
https://www.youtube.com/user/sadhanavillagepune
https://www.youtube.com/user/jinansvideos
www.re-cognition.org
www.kumbham.org
reimaginingschools.wordpress.com
http://designeducationasia.blogspot.com/
http://awakeningaestheticawareness.wordpress.com/
http://awakeningaestheticawareness.blogspot.in/
09447121544
0487 2386723
On 23 September 2014 03:19, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Dear Klaus and Francois,
>
> In my view, Klaus is quite right in his skepticism toward Latour’s concept
> of agency. Many of his essays are quite slippery on this point. He seems to
> say that artifacts possess agency without quite stating the point
> explicitly.
>
> The notion of an artifact that has agency raises profound problems. These
> are also linked to the concept of “flat ontology,” in which all beings seem
> to be more or less equal – chairs, chili peppers, and chandeliers are
> ontologically equal to galaxies, automobiles, and stones – and all of them
> ontologically equal to human beings. Even more interesting, some of the
> ontological entities in a flat ontology seem to count both as full entities
> and as their component parts, so that all electrons, all atoms, and all
> molecules count, even when they are part of another item that is already
> accounted for – such as a chili pepper on a planet in a galaxy.
>
> These kinds of issues have appeared in earlier debates on this list and
> others. When flat ontology came up a while back, I embarked on a reading
> program to learn more about what the notions of flat ontology and
> assemblies mean. I’m not quite ready to debate these issues today.
>
> For the moment, I simply join with Klaus to say that there is a difference
> between human beings and the world of things. Human beings work as
> designers. Agency and intentionality give rise to agency. The human beings
> for whom we design also possess agency. Inanimate objects in the world
> around us do not.
>
> Agency also implies ethics. We have ethical obligations to other human
> beings. We have ethical obligations to other living creatures in the world.
> From this, it follows that we have ethical obligations to the living world.
> We do not have ethical obligations to a chair, an automobile, or a chili
> pepper.
>
> Latour does not seem to discuss the etymology of the word “thing” in
> Reassembling the Social (Latour 2005). This discussion appears in an
> article on the concept of critique (Latour 2004).
>
> However, Latour does not discuss the etymology of the word “thing” in the
> relevant passage (Latour 2004: 232-237). Instead, he refers in an oblique
> way to Heidegger’s discussion of the word “thing,” and then slips on by.
>
> The full etymology of the word “thing” in the Oxford English Dictionary
> appears in a post that follows after this, along with usage exemplars and
> definitions of the different meanings. (I don’t know if the thorn and eth
> of the Old English futhark will come through properly on the list. If some
> characters are illegible, it means that some letters that appear in the
> Nordic languages, Anglo-Saxon, and Old English don’t reproduce. We shall
> see.)
>
> The etymology of the word “thing” is far more complex than Francois’s note
> suggests. The notion of a thing as an assembly of human beings making joint
> decisions is quite distinct to the notion of a thing or object – a word
> more closely related to the words for “case,” those issues brought before
> the thing (ting) for consideration and judgement.
>
> It is not a judge who decides a case. The members of the thing (ting)
> decide a case. The members of a thing (ting) are human beings who gather to
> vote. The judge presides over the assembly. The judge does not govern the
> decisions or control the outcome of a case except on issues involving legal
> procedure and the due process of the law.
>
> It its other meaning, a thing (ting) is a legislative assembly like a
> parliament or congress. A speaker, a chairman, a president or some other
> such official presides. The chairs and desks do not vote. Only the human
> beings elected to represent other human beings vote in the thing (ting).
>
> The notion of according the right to vote to an artifact makes no sense at
> all in the etymology of this word.
>
> When a run of automobiles kills people through mechanical malfunction, we
> do not hold the automobiles responsible. We blame the manufacturing firm,
> and we hold human executives accountable.
>
> As it so often is with conversations among designers, interesting
> metaphors provide us with useful ways to explore our ideas about the world.
> This is how I view some of Bruno Latour’s ideas about assemblies. I’m not
> prepared to act as though I believe these metaphors represent the social
> world for which we are responsible as designers.
>
> Non-humans do not have “concerns” in the way that human beings or other
> living creatures do. They do not share common concerns with human beings.
> It is problematic to suggest that we facilitate “material and immaterial
> non-humans” to “ ‘research’ and resolve issues of their common concern.”
>
> Normally, designers work on for legitimate stakeholders – people that
> engage them to solve problems. When a chair, a fork, or a galaxy asks me to
> facilitate its needs, I will give the project my attention … if it asks me
> nicely.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Ken
>
> Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | She Ji. The Journal
> of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation
> with Tongji University Press | Launching in 2015
>
> Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and
> Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University
> Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne
> University of Technology ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts |
> James Cook University | Townsville, Australia ||| Visiting Professor | UTS
> Business School | University of Technology Sydney University | Sydney,
> Australia
>
> Email [log in to unmask] | Academia
> http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
>
> Telephone: International +46 480 51514 — In Sweden (0) 480 51514 — iPhone:
> International +46 727 003 218 — In Sweden (0) 727 003 218
>
> --
>
> References
>
> Latour, Bruno. 2004. “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of
> Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry, 30 (Winter 2004), pp.
> 225—248.
>
> Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to
> Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
>
> --
>
> Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
>
> —snip—
>
> … he [Latour] describes the world as networks of agents. this reads good,
> but if you go into it, he fails to distinguish between human agency and
> physical forces, reducing everything to the latter. to me designers are
> agents who develop something that with the help of others can change the
> artificial world in which we live. as agents, designers have to argue for
> their proposals and are held accountable for the consequences of what they
> set in motion. they are not mechanisms responding to forces that surrounds
> them. explanations of design in these terms are demeaning.
>
> —snip—
>
> --
>
> Francois Nsenga wrote:
>
> —snip—
>
> On “design facilitation in participatory research”, as I did, you’ll learn
> a lot following Bruno Latour in his return to the etymological concept of
> the term “thing” in nordic languages. His “Reassembling the Social”
> inspired me the metaphor of a designer (ought to be) acting like a Judge
> presiding over an Assembly (“ding”) of all (both humans and material and
> immaterial non-humans) concerned, ‘facilitating’ all these to ‘research’
> and resolve issues of their common concern, whatever this may be at a
> specific time.
>
> This view tells us clearly who the “designer” ought to be as an
> ‘institutionalized’ professional, and what therefore would it be required
> of her/him in society (“ding”).
>
> —snip—
>
>
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