Dear Don,
I really appreciate the way you put old believes and certainties in a new order. So I was wondering how do you answer the following question running around my mind: What is in your opinion your most important work relevant to the contemporary complex issues?
Best Boris
Am 09.01.2018 um 20:19 schrieb Don Norman:
> How important is the history of a topic to the work being done today?
>
> This is a controversial topic. In the sciences, much of the history is
> interesting, fascinating, and mostly irrelevant to the ongoing work.
> Workers are expected to know the literature of past work from the very
> recent past (say, the past 5 years, plus a few critical significant works).
>
> In other fields, history is more important even for contemporary work. This
> is especially true in the arts and humanities.
>
> Design is a mixed bag: are we more along the science model, or the
> humanities and arts model?
>
> (I am always amused that when some topic is raised on this discussion list,
> someone is going to immediately cite, often at great length, the dictionary
> definition. To me, what the dictionary says (and what the origin of the
> word might be) is completely irrelevant. I want to know what contemporary
> thinkers believe. Modern dictionaries, after all, do not tell us what is
> right or wrong: they tell us what current meanings and usages are, which
> also means that they lag behind modern scholarship and research. And so,
> when I use a word or grammatical structure that is different than what my
> dictionary says or prescribes, I smile and say to myself, "I'll just wait a
> decade or two and I bet that then, the dictionaries will agree.")
>
>
> Finally, for your amusement (or vilification), I present to you a piece on
> the Bauhaus that I just wrote and published in the Magazine "bauhaus *now*"
> as part of the centenary celebration of the Bauhaus.
>
>
> What did I say? Here is a summary.
>
> The Bauhaus movement in Germany, roughly 1919-1933, marked a major turning
> point for design and its role in society. It exerted a powerful and
> influential role in the development of artist style. But today, for many
> designers, it is more of a historical curiosity than a role model. Why?
> What has changed? Aristotle is considered one of the forerunners of the
> scientific movement, even as his actual words and writings of science and
> technology are completely ignored by today's working scientists. That is
> how I feel about the Bauhaus movement: I am grateful for what it
> accomplished, but I do not find it relevant to the complex issues we face
> today.
>
>
> Am I right? That's not the correct question: it is simply my opinion. Some
> of you will be horrified, some amused, some supportive. All those opinions
> are correct.
>
> (The full paper is at
> https://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/then_and_now_the_ba.html )
>
> Have fun.
>
>
> --
> Don Norman
> Prof. and Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego
> [log in to unmask] designlab.ucsd.edu/ www.jnd.org <http://www.jnd.org/>
> Executive Assistant:
> Olga McConnell, [log in to unmask] +1 858 534-0992
>
>
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Boris Bandyopadhyay
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