Inquiries in design, complexity, & collective wisdom
Part II. Human-Scale Tools for Change
While many authors recently warned of the consequences of an ideology of unfettered growth, including Ronald Wright, Jared Diamond, George Monbiot, and Thomas Homer-Dixon), philosopher/priest Ivan Illich warned us 40 years ago. He foresaw a collapse of the post-industrial economy, which did not happen then. Illich proposed that autonomous, creative [...]
The new year often finds blogs and commentators concerned with the memes and themes of the oncoming era hurtling toward us. Participating as I do in the more “abstract” design communities (e.g., experience, anthro, service design, strategic innovation, interaction, information architecture) I observe a lot of unproductive self-definition. This takes the form of pronouncements about [...]
The full article is currently on Social Design, so first let me send readers to Joana’s stunning new design site. Here I’ll recap the central theme of Design Leadership for Problem Systems.
The design industry grew rapidly in the 20th century, by satisfying the massive and growing needs of consumer products, industrial systems, and a business [...]
Today’s Globe & Mail reports on ChangeCamp.
What is ChangeCamp? It is the application of ‘the long tail’ to public policy. It is a long-held and false assumption that ordinary citizens don’t care about public policy. The statement isn’t, of itself, false. Many, many, many people truly don’t care that much. They want to live their [...]
In the BusinessWeek blog, Nussbaum on Design packs all the goodies gathered over the years from “innovation” and drops them into “transformation.” This pronouncement led to well over a dozen responses in the Transforming Transformation Google groups, some of them pages in length. Comparing these responses with the replies to the cheerleading or briefer critical [...]
