By Designdialogues, on January 9th, 2010% 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, . . . → Read More: Convivial Design for the American Breakdown
By Designdialogues, on January 4th, 2010% 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 . . . → Read More: Who will we be when Design grows up?
By Designdialogues, on March 3rd, 2009% 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 . . . → Read More: Design Leadership for Problem Systems
By Designdialogues, on January 31st, 2009% 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 . . . → Read More: Toronto 2.0 – Becoming a wired participatory polity
By Designdialogues, on January 9th, 2009% 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 . . . → Read More: Who Transforms in Transformation?
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Re-visions by Peter Jones Design Dialogues invites you to examine ideas, new and old. Everything humanity creates is work-in-progress, and so is open to dialogue. Re-visions and re-views are welcome. Design Dialogues is for working out ideas, before they find their way into practice or in actual publications.
Innovators all face an urgent challenge to make the differences that must happen; there is no longer any status quo. Many of our trusted institutions & social contracts are now broken. Whether from fear or habit, our culture is not yet innovating democratically. We do not really know how to collaborate sufficiently to the task.
From healthcare to finance, politics to education, infrastructures & decision processes, we can & must reinvent our own futures. These social systems have evolved beyond their capacity to transform by management. Collaboration is insufficient - We truly need new ways of working, deciding, and organizing.
Of the many ways to collaborative intelligence, some demonstrably better than others. Dialogic design, based on systems thinking & design science, offers a validated way to create new understandings, design systemically, & act democratically on the deep drivers of a problem.
A community of practice meets for these dialogues in person every 2nd Wednesday in Toronto:

Art, science, and design are three ways of knowing, and in the field of action they inform each other. All modes must be recruited if we are to interfere & reinvent social systems. Your participation is required.
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