The paper draws attention to the discourses of waste that, while intending to be about reducing w... more The paper draws attention to the discourses of waste that, while intending to be about reducing waste, are warranting increases in waste. My response to this waste paradox will be to advocate for deliberate wasting–a mild Bataillean appeal to take pleasure in waste, something that will end up being overall less wasteful. For this reason, the following is intentionally fragmentary so at risk of wasting the opportunity. And what it does try to suggest is not anything especially new–just recycled ideas from Allan Stoekl (2007, 2009) and to a lesser extent Cathi Weeks (2011) and Gay Hawkins (2006).
A re-reading of Victor Papanek's _How Thing Don't Work_ in the more current context of Lean Manuf... more A re-reading of Victor Papanek's _How Thing Don't Work_ in the more current context of Lean Manufacturing and Lean Startup, and Transition Design.
A review of a lecture by Steven B Johnson on localising internet initiatives he was involved with... more A review of a lecture by Steven B Johnson on localising internet initiatives he was involved with at the time 2008. The review discusses the relationship between (non-fiction) writing, entrepreneurship and design in the context of the evolving internet.
Re-examining Victor Papanek's diagnosis of the structural failures in mass production given the m... more Re-examining Victor Papanek's diagnosis of the structural failures in mass production given the more recent context of Lean Agile, something that requires redirecting Papanek's faith in DIY. Published as a chapter in the exhibition catalogue Kries, Mateo, Amelie Klein, Alison J. Clarke, and Marc Zehntner, eds. Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design. Vitra Design Museum, 2018.
A Keynote Address to the 2015 Making Future Conference Plymouth College of Art exploring the rol... more A Keynote Address to the 2015 Making Future Conference Plymouth College of Art exploring the role craft can and needs to play in the politics of transition. The talk contrasts craft and design as small and slow processes as opposed to big and fast ones. There is a neo-craft-like quality to contemporary designing however as a result of LeanAgile. The unsustainability of these proactionary processes must be halted with demands for higher quality outputs in teh service of longer term changes.
An analysis of attempts to analogize Design and Evolution given that the two are by definition op... more An analysis of attempts to analogize Design and Evolution given that the two are by definition opposites. I argue that if there is an analogy between more rigorously understood notions of Design and Evolution, this can explain some of Design's more unsustainable aspects. I then argue that the analogy is used to try to depoliticize design as a form mimetology.
Digital devices are now the pervasive way in which the global consumer class navigates the world.... more Digital devices are now the pervasive way in which the global consumer class navigates the world. These devices are the result of changes in the modes of production, a shift from industrial to post-industrial designing. These processes involve an accelerated experimentalism that transforms what counts as real. In societies equipped with products of industrial designing, failure was something to be avoided through thoughtful engagements with possible futures. Contemporary societies no longer confine these 'trials of strength,' as Latour calls them, to studios, but instead recast the world as a laboratory. Everyday living is being normalized to a forever failing perspectivalism.
Longer original form of an Interview with Ivica Mitrović for "The XXI International Exhibition of... more Longer original form of an Interview with Ivica Mitrović for "The XXI International Exhibition of the Triennale di Milano, The 21st Century: Design After Design, presentation of the Republic of Croatia." These responses were shortened for publication in the exhibition catalogue. The answers were intended to differentiate what Speculative Critical Design currently is, from what Speculative Critical Design could and should be.
A polemical appeal for more Interaction Design academics to engage in more public media position ... more A polemical appeal for more Interaction Design academics to engage in more public media position taking with respect to the 'techonomy' from which they get funding and to which they provide employees. Such extra-academic critical reflections are crucial to the 'reflective practitioner' essence of Design, something that is being threatened as design is absorbed into HCI.
A catalogue essay for Mark Titmarsh's multimedia installation "The Thing" (2006). The essay exami... more A catalogue essay for Mark Titmarsh's multimedia installation "The Thing" (2006). The essay examines a) what it means to write about an artwork, b) why Martin Heidegger's aesthetics proceeds by way of a consideration of thingliness, c) the 'post-aesthetics of expanded painting' (Titmarsh's terms) especially in relation to plastic and plasticity.
A response to the 3 questions about Speculative Critical Design I was asked by curators of 'Desig... more A response to the 3 questions about Speculative Critical Design I was asked by curators of 'Design after Design' at the Triennale di Milano (http://www.21triennale.org/en/). A shorterned version will be published as part of the exhibition. The answers comprise another critical statement about the 'style of ambiguity' fetishized by SCD and a demand for more responsible and diverse envisioning of future sociomaterial risks.
The journal Design Philosophy Papers, edited by Anne-Marie Willis has just published a special is... more The journal Design Philosophy Papers, edited by Anne-Marie Willis has just published a special issue on Transition Design that contains 11 articles on the subject. The papers were submitted for a Transition Design Symposium held at Carnegie Mellon University in March 2015. Authors include Ezio Manzini, Cameron Tonkinwise, Gideon Kossoff, Damian White, Dennis Doordan, Peter Scupelli, Carl DiSalvo, Arturo Escobar and Anne-Marie Willis. The issue can be found on the Taylor & Francis website and must be purchased or accessed through your academic institution: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rfdp20/13/1
A schematic history of attempts to lower societal materials intensity by decoupling use and owner... more A schematic history of attempts to lower societal materials intensity by decoupling use and ownership. The paper argues that various shifts in social practices primarily centered around screen-based technologies have coalesced to make a range of different kinds of shared use more viable. A secondary argument concerns the ways in which technical approaches to sustainability finds themselves backing into wider political values; or that some seemingly central political values can dissipate as sociotechnical systems coevolve.
A schematic institutional history of the establishment of Practice-Based Design Research. Whilst ... more A schematic institutional history of the establishment of Practice-Based Design Research. Whilst Designing has matured into a Research-led engagement with social complexity, the entrance of Design into the university as a Discipline has more to do with Neoliberal restructuring of how research was managed for enhanced productivity. Nevertheless, Practice-based Design Research can also be read as a parallel to the development of Post Normal Science, engaging wider constituencies in the creation of knowledge about preferable futures.
The reason design is significant is the same reason why design’s significance is still not widely... more The reason design is significant is the same reason why design’s significance is still not widely enough registered, by research universities for instance, that is, that it focuses on everyday material usefulness. This is also why design research into the transformation of everyday practices must remain committed to producing research in and communicating research through everyday materiality – what could be called researching homeopathically.
Presented at the 6th International Sustainability Transitions (IST) Conference, August, 2015, Sus... more Presented at the 6th International Sustainability Transitions (IST) Conference, August, 2015, Sussex. This paper proposes a method for integrating and contextualizing in everyday life micro and macro approaches to sustainablity transitions, and suggests how this might contribute to the emerging field of 'transition design'. It does this by integrating three distinct ’theories of change’: transitions management/socio-technical transitions theory, social practice theory and the Domains of Everyday Life framework.
Presented at the 6th International Sustainability Transitions (IST) Conference, August, 2015, Sus... more Presented at the 6th International Sustainability Transitions (IST) Conference, August, 2015, Sussex. The paper argues that design (and designers) have a key role to play in the emerging fields of transition management and sustainability transitions. It presents an overview of design's recent evolution and ability to address complex problems and outlines key areas of design focus relevant to sustainability transitions. These include design for service, design for social innovation, design and policy and a new area of design study, research and practice: Transition Design.
The paper draws attention to the discourses of waste that, while intending to be about reducing w... more The paper draws attention to the discourses of waste that, while intending to be about reducing waste, are warranting increases in waste. My response to this waste paradox will be to advocate for deliberate wasting–a mild Bataillean appeal to take pleasure in waste, something that will end up being overall less wasteful. For this reason, the following is intentionally fragmentary so at risk of wasting the opportunity. And what it does try to suggest is not anything especially new–just recycled ideas from Allan Stoekl (2007, 2009) and to a lesser extent Cathi Weeks (2011) and Gay Hawkins (2006).
A re-reading of Victor Papanek's _How Thing Don't Work_ in the more current context of Lean Manuf... more A re-reading of Victor Papanek's _How Thing Don't Work_ in the more current context of Lean Manufacturing and Lean Startup, and Transition Design.
A review of a lecture by Steven B Johnson on localising internet initiatives he was involved with... more A review of a lecture by Steven B Johnson on localising internet initiatives he was involved with at the time 2008. The review discusses the relationship between (non-fiction) writing, entrepreneurship and design in the context of the evolving internet.
Re-examining Victor Papanek's diagnosis of the structural failures in mass production given the m... more Re-examining Victor Papanek's diagnosis of the structural failures in mass production given the more recent context of Lean Agile, something that requires redirecting Papanek's faith in DIY. Published as a chapter in the exhibition catalogue Kries, Mateo, Amelie Klein, Alison J. Clarke, and Marc Zehntner, eds. Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design. Vitra Design Museum, 2018.
A Keynote Address to the 2015 Making Future Conference Plymouth College of Art exploring the rol... more A Keynote Address to the 2015 Making Future Conference Plymouth College of Art exploring the role craft can and needs to play in the politics of transition. The talk contrasts craft and design as small and slow processes as opposed to big and fast ones. There is a neo-craft-like quality to contemporary designing however as a result of LeanAgile. The unsustainability of these proactionary processes must be halted with demands for higher quality outputs in teh service of longer term changes.
An analysis of attempts to analogize Design and Evolution given that the two are by definition op... more An analysis of attempts to analogize Design and Evolution given that the two are by definition opposites. I argue that if there is an analogy between more rigorously understood notions of Design and Evolution, this can explain some of Design's more unsustainable aspects. I then argue that the analogy is used to try to depoliticize design as a form mimetology.
Digital devices are now the pervasive way in which the global consumer class navigates the world.... more Digital devices are now the pervasive way in which the global consumer class navigates the world. These devices are the result of changes in the modes of production, a shift from industrial to post-industrial designing. These processes involve an accelerated experimentalism that transforms what counts as real. In societies equipped with products of industrial designing, failure was something to be avoided through thoughtful engagements with possible futures. Contemporary societies no longer confine these 'trials of strength,' as Latour calls them, to studios, but instead recast the world as a laboratory. Everyday living is being normalized to a forever failing perspectivalism.
Longer original form of an Interview with Ivica Mitrović for "The XXI International Exhibition of... more Longer original form of an Interview with Ivica Mitrović for "The XXI International Exhibition of the Triennale di Milano, The 21st Century: Design After Design, presentation of the Republic of Croatia." These responses were shortened for publication in the exhibition catalogue. The answers were intended to differentiate what Speculative Critical Design currently is, from what Speculative Critical Design could and should be.
A polemical appeal for more Interaction Design academics to engage in more public media position ... more A polemical appeal for more Interaction Design academics to engage in more public media position taking with respect to the 'techonomy' from which they get funding and to which they provide employees. Such extra-academic critical reflections are crucial to the 'reflective practitioner' essence of Design, something that is being threatened as design is absorbed into HCI.
A catalogue essay for Mark Titmarsh's multimedia installation "The Thing" (2006). The essay exami... more A catalogue essay for Mark Titmarsh's multimedia installation "The Thing" (2006). The essay examines a) what it means to write about an artwork, b) why Martin Heidegger's aesthetics proceeds by way of a consideration of thingliness, c) the 'post-aesthetics of expanded painting' (Titmarsh's terms) especially in relation to plastic and plasticity.
A response to the 3 questions about Speculative Critical Design I was asked by curators of 'Desig... more A response to the 3 questions about Speculative Critical Design I was asked by curators of 'Design after Design' at the Triennale di Milano (http://www.21triennale.org/en/). A shorterned version will be published as part of the exhibition. The answers comprise another critical statement about the 'style of ambiguity' fetishized by SCD and a demand for more responsible and diverse envisioning of future sociomaterial risks.
The journal Design Philosophy Papers, edited by Anne-Marie Willis has just published a special is... more The journal Design Philosophy Papers, edited by Anne-Marie Willis has just published a special issue on Transition Design that contains 11 articles on the subject. The papers were submitted for a Transition Design Symposium held at Carnegie Mellon University in March 2015. Authors include Ezio Manzini, Cameron Tonkinwise, Gideon Kossoff, Damian White, Dennis Doordan, Peter Scupelli, Carl DiSalvo, Arturo Escobar and Anne-Marie Willis. The issue can be found on the Taylor & Francis website and must be purchased or accessed through your academic institution: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rfdp20/13/1
A schematic history of attempts to lower societal materials intensity by decoupling use and owner... more A schematic history of attempts to lower societal materials intensity by decoupling use and ownership. The paper argues that various shifts in social practices primarily centered around screen-based technologies have coalesced to make a range of different kinds of shared use more viable. A secondary argument concerns the ways in which technical approaches to sustainability finds themselves backing into wider political values; or that some seemingly central political values can dissipate as sociotechnical systems coevolve.
A schematic institutional history of the establishment of Practice-Based Design Research. Whilst ... more A schematic institutional history of the establishment of Practice-Based Design Research. Whilst Designing has matured into a Research-led engagement with social complexity, the entrance of Design into the university as a Discipline has more to do with Neoliberal restructuring of how research was managed for enhanced productivity. Nevertheless, Practice-based Design Research can also be read as a parallel to the development of Post Normal Science, engaging wider constituencies in the creation of knowledge about preferable futures.
The reason design is significant is the same reason why design’s significance is still not widely... more The reason design is significant is the same reason why design’s significance is still not widely enough registered, by research universities for instance, that is, that it focuses on everyday material usefulness. This is also why design research into the transformation of everyday practices must remain committed to producing research in and communicating research through everyday materiality – what could be called researching homeopathically.
Presented at the 6th International Sustainability Transitions (IST) Conference, August, 2015, Sus... more Presented at the 6th International Sustainability Transitions (IST) Conference, August, 2015, Sussex. This paper proposes a method for integrating and contextualizing in everyday life micro and macro approaches to sustainablity transitions, and suggests how this might contribute to the emerging field of 'transition design'. It does this by integrating three distinct ’theories of change’: transitions management/socio-technical transitions theory, social practice theory and the Domains of Everyday Life framework.
Presented at the 6th International Sustainability Transitions (IST) Conference, August, 2015, Sus... more Presented at the 6th International Sustainability Transitions (IST) Conference, August, 2015, Sussex. The paper argues that design (and designers) have a key role to play in the emerging fields of transition management and sustainability transitions. It presents an overview of design's recent evolution and ability to address complex problems and outlines key areas of design focus relevant to sustainability transitions. These include design for service, design for social innovation, design and policy and a new area of design study, research and practice: Transition Design.
This is an attempt to sketch a socio-philosophical account of the nature of digital devices that ... more This is an attempt to sketch a socio-philosophical account of the nature of digital devices that makes them, I will argue, distinctively wastable, but also resistant to secondary markets or reuse. The presentation explores the different ontologies that underpin crafted tools, mass produced objects, and computational platforms. The way the latter afford personalised assemblages of information flows means that such devices tend to have little value to us in terms of ‘this particular material instantiation here and now.’ If I drop my phone in the toilet, ‘no matter;’ I can be exactly where I was within an hour (for $1000+) because who I am with respect to that thing in no way resides in that thing.
I will share phenomenologies of this dematerialised version of possessions, connecting them to mental model lags concerning the material wear-and-tear and energy use of communication and information technologies. Those mental model lags also go in the opposite direction, with people believing that their ‘data exhaust’ continues to haunt the memory of digital devices even after ‘wiping,’ leading to concerns about giving those devices a second use life, at least if ‘shared’ with strangers. Between these two different ways of (dis)possessing digital devices is a third resulting from ‘firmware’ tethering hardware to businesses, but decoupling subscription-based software, further constraining digital ‘product life extension.’
UAL Practice Research in Social Design Conference, 2022
A short sketch of an argument about the role of practice research in social design; that it is le... more A short sketch of an argument about the role of practice research in social design; that it is less about reflective practice, in the sense of making the tacit (in Polanyi's sense) explicit, and more in the sense of testing the validity of what communities are (co-)designing, in order to establish 'collective knowledge' (on the analogy of Polanyi's 'Personal Knowledge') about how to realise community transitions.
A presentation at SVA's Products of Design degree program on the limits and dangers of empathic d... more A presentation at SVA's Products of Design degree program on the limits and dangers of empathic design. The talk discusses the nature of empathy in design research and the ways in which it leads to an excessive number of things that try to erase the sometimes pleasurable finitude of living.
Transition Design aims to find ways transitioning our societies toward more sustainable futures. ... more Transition Design aims to find ways transitioning our societies toward more sustainable futures. The rise of the Sharing Economy appears to be a transition opportunity, though all such historic moments are bifurcation points. The Interaction Design of these digital platforms is pivotal to whether the Sharing Economy affords re-embedding economic exchanges in social relations or instead accelerates neoliberal capitalism.
Terry Irwin & Cameron Tonkinwise discuss Transition Design and its relationship to Service Design... more Terry Irwin & Cameron Tonkinwise discuss Transition Design and its relationship to Service Design at the Service Design Network Global Conference in NYC, October, 2015
A presentation to the London Doctoral Design Centre attempting to situate the epistemological inn... more A presentation to the London Doctoral Design Centre attempting to situate the epistemological innovations afforded by practice-based design research within the wider context of our societies attempts to negotiate complex risk.
An attempt to articulate the sociomaterial practice of futuring without modernist impositions to ... more An attempt to articulate the sociomaterial practice of futuring without modernist impositions to which Transition Design aspires.
A strange TEDx talk about Design for Change as multi-stage, multi-level transitioning, as opposed... more A strange TEDx talk about Design for Change as multi-stage, multi-level transitioning, as opposed to the optimism that characterizes popular Design Thinking.
Where craft was mired in real-time in-the-field trial-and-error, design promised processes of for... more Where craft was mired in real-time in-the-field trial-and-error, design promised processes of forethought to find and decide on preferred futures. The mania today for design thinking iterations, rapid full-scale prototyping, and pivoting lean beta releases threatens to return us to the era of craft.
When I spoke at SVA this time last year, I reacted with the suggestion that designers needed to re-cultivate the capacity to vision bigly and boldly. But I now worry that this modernist gesture lies too close to that of the techno-libertarians running many digital businesses.
This talk worries about those who advocate the Proactionary Principle - the insistence that to face today's challenges, such as those concerning our sustainability, we need to take risks with large-scale technologies. Given this shift in the political spectrum of design, I suggest some heuristics for designing resolutely but reversibly.
A presentation outlining the domain of 'Transition Design' as bringing a Social Change Personal P... more A presentation outlining the domain of 'Transition Design' as bringing a Social Change Personal Posture + Theories of Sociotechnical Regime Change to the assisted emergence of cosmopolitan localism
This document provides a link to a Transition Design Seminar that is published on Medium to share... more This document provides a link to a Transition Design Seminar that is published on Medium to share with educators. The site contains a course overview, learning outcomes, class descriptions, required reading and topic-related videos and concept diagrams.
A newly expanded bibliography for Transition Design, organized into the categories of the Transit... more A newly expanded bibliography for Transition Design, organized into the categories of the Transition Design Framework: Vision; Theories of Change; Mindset & Posture; New Ways of Designing
A template for 1. critiquing existing projects through the lens of Transition Design and 2. propo... more A template for 1. critiquing existing projects through the lens of Transition Design and 2. proposing ways in which the existing project might become a step in a transition solution
Syllabus for an inaugural graduate/PhD seminar in Transition Design. Taught in spring 2015 at The... more Syllabus for an inaugural graduate/PhD seminar in Transition Design. Taught in spring 2015 at The School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University. An outline w/reading material for the course can also be accessed on this site.
The first graduate and PhD seminar in Transition Design was launched in spring of 2015. The outli... more The first graduate and PhD seminar in Transition Design was launched in spring of 2015. The outline contains an overview for each class and required reading.
A paraphrase with extensive quotation of a hardcopy pamphlet I have entitled _Education_ likely b... more A paraphrase with extensive quotation of a hardcopy pamphlet I have entitled _Education_ likely by Fernando Flores, copyrighted in the late 1980s to Business Design Associates and Logonet. The pamphlet describes what it means to learn a new domain of language-action in the context of 'ontological design.' I try to draw out what seems significant about this approach, not only to education, but also radical innovation, and so transition design.
A late, and therefore rushed entry to the Evil Corporations Symposium organised by Professor Penn... more A late, and therefore rushed entry to the Evil Corporations Symposium organised by Professor Penny Crofts at UTS. A very 'first pass attempt to think a situation through' - that situation being the business ethics of 'if you can, you ought.' Embarrassingly impoverished in terms of literature-or to put it hopefully, looking for recommendations as to research I really should have known about to participate. This is a learning paper rather than a research paper, in that its author, a Design Studies scholar, is attempting to learn about the discourse of Business Ethics rather than being an expert in that field.
A summary of some Service Design teaching that tries to show students the limits of Service Desig... more A summary of some Service Design teaching that tries to show students the limits of Service Design Blueprints and ways of changing or supplementing Service Design Blueprints so that they can help designers design more comprehensive and politically sensitive services.
Short paper presented at the Seventh International Symposium
on Process Organization Studies: Ski... more Short paper presented at the Seventh International Symposium on Process Organization Studies: Skillful Performance: Enacting Expertise, Competence, and Capabilities in Organizations
This was a draft chapter for an edited collection that was misdirected so a whole other chapter w... more This was a draft chapter for an edited collection that was misdirected so a whole other chapter was written for that book. The chapter is a completed draft but without any references. I will likely not work it up for anything else so sharing here. It concerns Transition Design in the context of the transition to Distributed Energy Systems. The chapter explains what social practice based visioning entails and the difficulties for trying imagine, in desirable ways, what life will be like on the other side of a paradigm shifting Transition.
A keynote address at the Media Architecture Biennale 2020 (rescheduled for July 2021) introducing... more A keynote address at the Media Architecture Biennale 2020 (rescheduled for July 2021) introducing Transition Design by way of Temporary Energy Abundance Futures and some discussion of earth-oriented design.
Waste, especially when conceived as the object of 'management,' tends to be a very materialistica... more Waste, especially when conceived as the object of 'management,' tends to be a very materialistically pragmatic issue. It is an industrial problem needing re-engineering. In what follows, I would like foreground the more conceptual side to waste in order to better understand the nature of waste in post-industrial contexts. In the era when wealth generation is mostly associated with information and communication systems, how to understand the how and why of waste? Processes put in place to minimize certain kinds of less material waste, like time and value, seem to be causing increased material waste as a side effect. Responding requires taking heed of the ambivalence essential to the very idea of waste.
A draft of a review, forthcoming in Design Issues, of Ezio Manzini's _The Politics of the Everyda... more A draft of a review, forthcoming in Design Issues, of Ezio Manzini's _The Politics of the Everyday_, the first in Bloomsbury's "Design in Dark Times" series
Responses to interview questions that afforded reflections on Speculative Critical Design and its... more Responses to interview questions that afforded reflections on Speculative Critical Design and its relation to Transition Design. An edited version should appear at http://speculativeedu.eu/.
This is a re-vised version of a paper drafted for Emily Carr University's Current Magazine. In th... more This is a re-vised version of a paper drafted for Emily Carr University's Current Magazine. In this version, I've tried to de-autobiographicize the argument, which meant purging the convoluted and misleading detour through Lyotard.
A response to the "Democracy and Design Platform" that seems to me a woefully inadequate response... more A response to the "Democracy and Design Platform" that seems to me a woefully inadequate response to the counter-cosmopolitan decisionism that currently has populist momentum. The first part of this paper argues that we must take seriously that current anti-democratic sentiments represent a voluntaristic anti-modern paradigm shift. The second part argues that design's response must consequently acknowledge the essentially undemocractic nature of designing. The paper is hasty and ignores Marxist and decolonial critiques of democracy, so remains liberally reformist in ways I am not happy about. But the criticisms of 'Stand up for Democracy' that motivate this paper needed to be articulated. The paper might appear in Emily Carr University's 8th Issue of _Current_.
A convoluted attempt to argue that design is in fact a form of magic, an act of social constructi... more A convoluted attempt to argue that design is in fact a form of magic, an act of social construction that makes things appear coherent, effect action-at-a-distance, and compel people to interact in particular ways. The chapter tries to follow Latour's (and to a lesser extent Graeber's) attempt to give a symmetrical account of fetishism. The argument thinks that it is motivated by solidarity with decolonizing design.
Though designing is cast as a creative practice, materializing preferable ways of being, it does ... more Though designing is cast as a creative practice, materializing preferable ways of being, it does so only by destroying current products, habits and values. I argue that designers must learn to acknowledge and take responsibility for this destructive side to their practice. Designers can cultivate their destructive capacities and deploy those against all that is unsustainable about current societies. But to do so also entails challenging prevalent notions that what is preferable is progress, advancement beyond how things were done before. Instead, I argue that the most creatively destructive thing designers can do is work to restore previous more sustainable ways of living and working.
Our societies are structurally unsustainable. Efforts at incremental or non-disruptive change hav... more Our societies are structurally unsustainable. Efforts at incremental or non-disruptive change have proven inadequate, with levels of unsustainability quickly rebounding. This chapter examines what structural change might entail. It explores different ideas about where structure lies: in physical infrastructures, in worldviews and social values, or in everyday habitual practices. It concludes that structural change requires designers to combine utopian and cynical attitudes in a constant state of creative hypocrisy. Redirection [of our societies toward more sustainable futures] always has to go to actor and the acted upon. It certainly cannot simply rest upon those overplayed and vague notions of 'attitudinal change' posted with individuals that are so often evoked by idealist reformers. Such a notion of change implies an inflated faith in the ability of the will of these individuals to alter the nature of cultural, economic and institutional structures. Rather, redirection requires an ontological shift in the mode of being of the actor. The value of what one knows and does may have to be fundamentally altered… By implication this means that the being of professional identity and conduct [must also have to be] radically and structurally changed. Fry 2009: 11
The first century of modern design expert practice centered on designing products that were inten... more The first century of modern design expert practice centered on designing products that were intended to owned. Digital devices and the economies and socialities they afford are eroding prior assumptions about 'property.' Designers must develop new forms of research that will allow them to better discern in-transition practices of shared use. This chapter attempts to articulate some heuristics for design-oriented research of post-ownership systems.
An attempt to explain the significance of Evgeny Morozov's podcast, A Sense of Rebellion, for des... more An attempt to explain the significance of Evgeny Morozov's podcast, A Sense of Rebellion, for design.
Uploads
Papers by cameron tonkinwise
I will share phenomenologies of this dematerialised version of possessions, connecting them to mental model lags concerning the material wear-and-tear and energy use of communication and information technologies. Those mental model lags also go in the opposite direction, with people believing that their ‘data exhaust’ continues to haunt the memory of digital devices even after ‘wiping,’ leading to concerns about giving those devices a second use life, at least if ‘shared’ with strangers. Between these two different ways of (dis)possessing digital devices is a third resulting from ‘firmware’ tethering hardware to businesses, but decoupling subscription-based software, further constraining digital ‘product life extension.’
When I spoke at SVA this time last year, I reacted with the suggestion that designers needed to re-cultivate the capacity to vision bigly and boldly. But I now worry that this modernist gesture lies too close to that of the techno-libertarians running many digital businesses.
This talk worries about those who advocate the Proactionary Principle - the insistence that to face today's challenges, such as those concerning our sustainability, we need to take risks with large-scale technologies. Given this shift in the political spectrum of design, I suggest some heuristics for designing resolutely but reversibly.
on Process Organization Studies: Skillful Performance: Enacting Expertise, Competence, and Capabilities in Organizations