Klaus,
Thank you for your message.
In your writing, at least on this list, you take a human-centric position
and implicitly indicate your support for a position on design that assumes
design activity can only be undertaken by humans.
This is evident in the post I responded to which included '[Latour] he
fails to distinguish between human agency and physical forces. . . 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.' Seems to me to follow your usual position assuming or
insisting that design can only be undertaken by humans.
I pointed to the reality, that in fact, design activity that involves humans
occurs as a collaboration between human designers and other non-human
aspects of the world in ways that it is significantly hard to separate them
at micro, meso and macro levels. In fact, much of what is claimed to be
human designers acting out their agency is on closer inspection achieved
outside of them often by computer systems but there are many mechanisms.
Further, in contradiction to what you claimed, human designers often
themselves act as mechanisms responding to factors around them. The latter
is proven because we can do research on human design activity and human
creativity.
Your position on human agency as the basis for design has been fairly
consistent over the years since we first met at La Clusaz. It underpinned
much of the recent discussion and I was drawing attention to the problems
with it and pointing to a way forward.
Ken,
You take a human centric position on design and agency of designers that has
similar problems to that Klaus. In your posts you commented that ' Klaus is
quite right in his skepticism toward Latour's concept of agency. . . 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.. . . , 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. ' This and many other things you have written seem to me to be
clearly arguing that design should be considered only as a human activity.
You then raise the interesting issue of ethics and, by implication,
responsibility. Your argument is that we sue manufacturers and executives
for vehicle failures and not the vehicles, and for that you deduce
illogically that design must be a human activity.
This is an old picture of design that ignores a lot of other constraints,
one being that the legal system is tied to perspectives from before current
levels of technology or reasoning about responsibility. However, a more
recent picture that is more relevant is that of legal action on design
failures due to errors in design software. In these cases, financial and
legal responsibility is directed at the producers of the design software.
By implication, the design software is undertaking part of the design
activity and design decision-making, i.e. the agency of design. Similarly,
legal issues associated with autonomous vehicles and robots will result in
increasing challenges to who or what is doing the designing.
These are challenges that are almost impossible to address with a
perspective on design activity that privileges or exclusively insists that
design is only from human agency.
Again, I point to the fact that by transitioning the basis of design theory
onto output as in 'design is a specification for making or doing things'
then many of these theory problems (and most of the theory issues relating
to design) can be addressed more easily.
Forget Carthage, persuading you guys is more like trying to change the
direction of an old heavy oil tanker heading full steam for the cliffs.
Best wishes,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask]
--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Klaus Krippendorff
Sent: Tuesday, 23 September 2014 12:03 PM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design
Subject: RE: Design as human agency (was Design Facilitation for
participatory work)
terry,
again, i see you are going overboard with misreading what was said -- and i
can't speak for ken. you take your definition of design as generally
acceptable, and then conflate what we had been discussing, and (dis)agreeing
by roping irrelevant contingencies into your argument.
i have not suggested that design can be done only by humans and am not
really interested in such essentialist assertions. surely, birds build nests
and termites build huge hives. there is a question of whether they could do
otherwise. for me, designs would have to be innovations. one could argue
that each bird's nest is different and made from what its environment
provides. i would not want to go so far as saying that plants design their
shape. we did not deliberate on whether design is uniquely human or its
generalization to animals, gods, or machines.
christiano, ken, and i talked of human agency with ken agreeing with me that
it is unlike the physical connections between technological devices. there
are all kinds of human agents, designers being one (or more than one) kind.
you say that problems and contradictions occur for example when designers
use tools, information, embodied knowledge, etc. if you claim that the use
of tools or having bodies lead to contradictions of defining human agency,
show me a few contradiction. your statement does not make any sense to me.
we all have bodies and use tools, whether as designers or in ordinary life.
you argue against a proposition that 'design is only human activity' which
is not mine nor have i read it in any of the discussions other than in your
email.
to me, your equation of a design with a specification and a designer with
someone who or something that creates specifications is highly problematic.
it derives from engineering during the industrial era, where engineers where
functional parts of institutional structures and given the authority to
issue instructions to subordinate others in that structure. i have worked in
engineering offices where this was the case. however, all of my subsequent
experiences tell me that one can program computers that way but designing in
the service of and perhaps participation with people wouldn't work with an
authoritarian perspective. i for one prefer not to be theorized as writing
specifications or computer programs. i see myself as an agent in a
supporting role and with responsibilities to others.
in the end you state "THE key definitions ARE ...". why couldn't you be more
humble and pose the question to designers of whether what they do could be
defined that way?
cheers
klaus
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