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INCOMPLETE DRAFT IN PROGRESS
The context of ds21
personal overview
by John Wood
Society needs 'joined-up dreaming'
- We are confused about the relationship between ecology (Nature) and economy (money/profit).
- How the mass media deals with each of them reveals society's self-delusion
- It exploits both 'Ecology' and 'Economy' events as sources of crisis
- It therefore implies that they are comparable in scale...
- Arguably, this type of cynicism contributes to the threat of human extinction
- We know that economic growth damages the natural environment
- Perhaps we need a more attractive alternative to the discourse of environmentalism
- We need to broaden the range and remit of Eco-design.
Designers must think beyond this contradiction
- The DS21 project addresses our inability to share dreams of the 'good life' beyond cheap energy.
- It suggests that we must envision ourselves within a viable solar economy.
- We must do so in a way that is so detailed and clear that it becomes attainable.
- Ds21 seeks to surpass what has been possible within the historical discourse of eco-design.
- In so doing it speculates that we need a new mode of ‘metadesign’.
- Metadesign would encourage the emergence of life-affirming and ecologically adaptive ways of living.
- The eventual outcome for this inquiry is therefore the co-sustainment of synergistic communities.
- We must first introduce terms of reference for this quest.
- These must appeal to, and be effective at, all levels of government, society and business.
Could 'Attainable Utopias' be an alternative to 'Sustainability'?
- Environmentalist debate sometimes seems puritanical, ascetic, worthy, and - ultimately - negative.
- The idea of ‘sustainability’ was conceived as a simple, moral instrument.
- What we need is term that acts as a respectful reflection of how Nature works.
- The word 'sustainability' reflects this problem.
- Its lack of precision was useful, for it was an expedient political tool (Brundtland, 1987).
- There is usually a price to pay for amelioration.
- In this case, the discourse of ‘sustainable development’ is blighted by its own history of compromise.
- This led to the current, widespread misuse of the term ‘sustainability’.
- We are now used to terms such as ‘sustainable consumption’ (UN, 2005), or ‘sustainable business’ (2005).
- These are too self-contradictory and imprecise to be helpful.
- Popular use of the term ‘sustainability’ reflects our arrogance as a species.
- It tends to affirm our faith in a fundamentally anthropocentric and technologically-administered world.
- Perhaps we need to develop an aggressively positive discourse of ‘synergistic metadesign’
Developing a New Metadesign
- The scale of the problem is very large.
- How can we learn to ‘un-manage’ the self-sustaining nature of Nature?
- We must acknowledge the exceedingly complex and capricious nature of the crisis.
- We must act with due sensitivity
- We need to develop 'joined-up' systems that reconcile imagination, observation, and action
- Most designers are trained to work within a narrow, specialist remit
- Their subordinate professional role and status stops them from fulfilling their potential
- We can invent a new form of metadesign that might change this situation
- This would enable designers to redesign the way they design
- This will mean developing a holistic grammar for describing highly complex systems
Thinking beyond atomistic logic
- The above problem shows a fragmented mindset that emerged from western thought
- In short, humanism and atomism encouraged us to see the world as separate 'pieces'
- After Socrates we developed a strongly individual-centred view of the world
- After the French Revolution, citizens began to see themselves as quasi-monarchs
- Today, it seems reasonable to see individuals as more important than society
- The 'consumer is King' - with individual human rights, but no responsibilities
- Western science also reflects this individual-centred (monocular) belief system
- Hence, we tend to think of 'symbiosis' or 'game theory' in terms of viewpoints
- (Many good exceptions - including Lovelock and Margulis)
Designing beyond the 'win-win' scenario
- Since the 19th century citizens needed to be individuated customers
- Today we must be increasingly self-knowing, self-aware, and self-other reflective
- Arguably, it is hard to see the 'whole', when society is a multiplicity of egos
- We know that Adam Smith is outdated, but the economic system ignores this
- Within this historical context 'win-win' (e.g. symbiosis) seemed like a major leap
- But it also sounded like an 'end in itself'
- Within a larger (i.e. ecological) context it is only a special type of solipsism
- Metadesigners can go much further than designing for 'win-win'
What is a 'Win-Win' situation?
- The idea of 'symbiosis' ('win-win') is potentially useful for everyone
- However, it is normally shown as only 2 players connected by a single relation
- We need to expand our grammar of description to acknowledge more 'winners'
- The western grammar of agency makes this more complicated than it should be
- We need to evolve a fractal system of 'rich' ethical relations to depicts this
- In this system, every relation is always precessive, and therefore unexpectedly auspicious
- This would enable us to transcend bureacracy, large currency systems, cynicism, etc.
Using Tetrahedral Logic to bring Synergy
- Synergy needs to be presented in a clearer way, in order to be useful
- It is a a complex mode of optimization
- We might need to think outside our rather egotistical mindset to grasp it
- Ultimately, we need to develop a comprehensive grammar of metadesign
- This is because our current grammar of relations lacks 'dimensions'
- One inspiration for this is the tetrahedron
'Win-Win-Win-Win' is six times better than 'Win-Win'
- A 'win-win' situation can be thought of as 2 winners sharing 1 (symbiotic) relationship
- Consider a system of 4 winners who contribute to each other's success:
- This process might consist of 6 (symbiotic) relationships
- This is explained by looking at the way the tetrahedron works
Beyond symbiosis
- Symbiosis entails a context represented as many co-dependent relations
- We may conceive this as a fractal to make it infinitely extensible (micro+macro)
- By aligning several orders of synergy to create a 'synergy of synergies'
- Here, it is helpful to visualise synergistic ‘alignment’ in an appropriate topological configuration.
- (Not, for example, as a simple ‘linear’ alignment such as cubes standing on top of the other)
- We need a cohesive set of mutually-sustaining relations, such as a heterarchy of players
- The presence of intrinsic roles within a linear set make their relations perennially unequal.
- (because only two out of the four elements are immediately adjacent to more than one other).
Towards a synergy of metadesign
- In order to develop a 'synergy of synergies' the ds21 researchers needed an agenda
- This included synergising the ideas and the way we collaborate
- It also included synergising the practical possibilities and outcomes within our work
- We mapped 4 factors in a tetrahedral form that encourages 6 level of interconnection
1) New Knowing (from intuition, embodiment, & sharing)
2) Envisioning (thinking / criticizing / mapping)
3) Communicating (balancing internal & external conditions)
4) Pushing/Doing (resourcing, creating, and producing)
What have we achieved so far?
- The project was funded by EPSRC/AHRC between January and December 2005
- During this time we learned a great deal and will conduct a more ambitious level of work in 2006
- Our complete set of papers is in alphabetical order
- Here are some of the sub-sections in which new possible 'synergy tools' were outlined
- The ignore the 'list' format. Each section is intended to be synergised with the others
Metadesign
- In her paper Is-Metadesign-the-Solution? Karen Blincoe called for changes at many levels of society and industry.
- She warned that Eco-design by itself may not be powerful enough to withstanding our immensely powerful economic system.
- John Wood proposed that a form of metadesign might be an alternative.
- Elisa Giaccardi offered some insights into what metadesign might entail.
- Otto van Nieuwenhuijze offered some tools for enhancing synergy within the metadesign process.
- Naomi Gornick reminded us that we would need an education system for metadesigners.
Synergy within buildings and communities
- Eco-architect Bill Dunster has experienced the forces at first hand, in settting up his pioneering zero-carbon housing project BEDZED.
- He offered a practical agenda for dealing with some immediate problems.
- Phil Jones explored ways to achieve synergy at the engineering level by modelling the environmental performance of buildings
- Jan- Marc Petroshka considered what a synergistic urban community might resemble.
Caroline Davey (with Cooper, Boyko and Wootton) explored ways in which socially responsible design might be able to deliver sustainable living styles.
- John Wood adopted a planning perspective in seeling ways to enhance synergy within cities.
Currency design
- Richard Douthwaite advocates the design of 4 different types of GlobalEconomicSynergy
- His EconomicSynergyConclusions suggest that countries should have 1) savings 2) trade currency
- This would help to keep Capital and current money flows separate
- A new world currency should be linked to population levels, rather than economic power
blue cube
Bisociative elements
- For the developing bilingual, then, use of two different languages provides access to differing visions of that same world (language relativity). (Ong, 2002)
- Furthermore, the ability to function in more than one language also provides a way of ‘stepping outside of’ one paradigm and of being able to compare and contrast one view with the other (Ong, 2002)
Memes
- (see Pete & John's paper on memes in metadesign). Attempts to generate, cultivate, or manage 'memes' are likely to prove troublesome for all but the most patient and alert.
- One way to map the domains of a meme might be to invent a classification system that resembles the twin axes of sympoiesis and symtechnesis.
WHERE: 'X' is referred to and - in popular terms - is regarded as being one thing but comprises, however, a range of 'orders' and/or attributes. Hence, we might consider, say, four customary 'orders' of design memetics where 'X' is identified as taking the following forms:
1) transtemporal - the enduring and generic ‘idea-of’ ‘X’
2) anticipatory - the ‘desire-for’ - or 'fear of' ‘X’
3) proximal - discovery of the actual and/or material presence of (i.e. ‘thing-of’) ‘X’
4) conjugative - the ‘contagious replication-of’ ‘X’
Where: 1) and 2) might appear to correspond more to 'sympoiesis' and 3) and 4) might correspond more to 'symtechnesis'.
- It may be apparent that 1-4 may represent a life-cycle that loops itself into sustainment.
- In other words, some memes are partially autopoietic (literally, 'self-producing') over their characteristic life-cycle.
- Once we can get to know their 'signature' we may then be able to intervene at specific times/places in order to regulate their growth and decay.
- To do this we must first understand how the memetic orders are aligned with one another.
Mapping the Relations between the Memetic Orders
- In terms of human society and culture, 4) is sustained by the aggregate subsistence of 1-3.
- This mapping method would enable researchers to observe phase relations between the respective memetic orders in actual case studies.
- For example, it would be possible to plot the different angle of coincidence between, say, the increase in anticipation for, and the actual presence of, a given meme such as a 'flu virus.
- Importantly, however, to do so we we might differentiate between the 'rumour' and the 'panic' stages of a serious influenza outbreak.
- In some cases there would be a clear causal relation between , say 2) and 3), and in others, there may not.
TO BE COMPLETED
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