send all mail to change@idie.net
home of launch-and-learn activism
|
Innovation and Design for Information Empowerment
idie.net, I DIE for change Enough Is Enough 1999: IDIE mission first draft No Design-Fix for migratory attention RECENT and upcoming changes
No Design-Fix for migratory attention In the fix-prone everyday, we are incessantly offered 'final' solutions, to a wide assortment of problems: financial, psychological, representational, physical, educational, informational, communicational. Life's survival through fix. Fix religion. Even when very little ever really 'breaks'—we keep fixing our illusions with goods and services and adapting our consumption habits to new media affordances and/as 'rules'. The technological fix has a long history and some eloquent critics, from Neil Postman to Langdon Winner. One of the other stronger fixes, less acknowledged so less critiqued, but very relevant to this site's mission, is the design fix: a strong belief that public communication, meaning a transfer of opinion, experience and knowledge, meaning building relations between people and ideas and among people, meaning emancipation through expression, meaning improving the world by improving ones symbolic language—is a design mission per se. Now all of the above meaningful processes are no illusions in themselves! Yet with no exception they thrive in their proper 'markets' and communities, with a constant re-evaluation and negotiation of their strengths and weaknesses—be it through social, political, cultural, or commercial organization. These forms of organization need updates to their symbolic languages, as much as they need the continuous re-invention of their proper practices and strategies: it is two inseparable projects in one, societal action and/as its (inter)mediation. When societal action at a large scale embraces new communicational tools, opening to new markets of conversation; when, like in recent times, in networked media, action and mediation merge into one communicational bravura (see Fasten Your Competences for some examples of consumer empowerment), the design fix will only slow the pace of change, re-commodify it, incorporate it in a consensus critique of consumerism. Design fix assumptions come after the fact. Contrary to modernism's ideology, there's no makeable, makebelieve world awaiting, outside the spectacle: design cannot condition for the better—all by itself. There's no such thing as a design fix, just like there's no such thing as a technological fix. Anchoring symbolic meaning in contemporary media, as if it were incunables, is a misunderstanding of the ephemeral. Anchoring emancipatory action in 'purchase circles', as if it were revolutionary cells, is another battle lost. Design at the end of fix should not be called upon to stabilize markets run amok. When attention thus migrates, adrift in a media aggregate of myriad connections and communications, to change its direction away from information slavery, design should operate on a strict information exchange rate base. It will not be telling citizens who or what to stand up to against—it will be tapping citizens for their survival mechanisms, hoping to understand and commit to new flows of attention and action. When large corporations today tap citizens for their needs' profiles, in order to cater to them with customized goods and services, designers should tap citizens for alternative knowledge and principle, in order to cater to their cultural resistance. Today's consumer doesn't need a fix, (s)he needs a break. |
re-professionalization
Kick the Hab  . . .Conrad Taylor (information designer, UK) I'm not denying that it's useful and valuable that some people should develop their expertise in design, innovation and communication, and make a living by practicing those skills (ideally for the good of society); but I would wish to add, as an adjunct ambition, helping as many people as possible to be more articulate communicators in various media, more visually literate, and more involved in designing and creating their own lives—rather than living life choices and ingesting informative(?) communications that have been designed for them by others. Don Norman (designer/author, USA) The best designs are always the ones that I create for myself—and that's true for everyone (in Fast Company) Migration Patrick Brantlinger (...) Where before there appeared to be just domination, the ideological impositions of what Adorno and Horkheimer called the 'culture industry', suddenly—in the work of John Fiske, Iain Chambers, and others—there appear to be complex negotiations over meanings and values going on between producers and consumers, or between the managers of the culture industries and their mass audiences. 'The masses' of powerless, robotized 'subjects' feared by Adorno and Horkheimer and anatomized by Althusser turn out to be everyday gals and guys pretty much just like you and me. Hey, we don't own corporations, but we know what we like in the way of tv shows, movies, and music, and we make our own sense of these mass cultural forms when we consume them. This is the meaning of those forms: we, the people, confer meaning and value on the products of the culture industries. ("'Post-poststructuralist' or Prelapsarian? Cultural studies and the new historicism" from Rethinking Culture 1992 conference proceedings) Mark Poster (author, USA) The shift to a decentralized network of communications makes senders receivers, producers consumers, rulers ruled, upsetting the logic of understanding of the first media age. (Postmodern Virtualities) Jeff Bezos (amazon.com CEO, on zShops) This is a win for customers who get bigger selection, a win for sellers who can now reach more than 12 million customers hassle-free, and a win for Amazon.com because we're now an even better shopping destination. This is all about finding what you want and saving time and money. Manifesto for growth The following manifesto was first presented by Canadian designer Bruce Mau at the Doors of Perception 5 conference, November 1998. 1 allow events to change you 2 forget about good 3 process is more important than outcome 4 love your experiments like ugly children 5 go deep 6 capture accidents 7 study 8 drift 9 begin anywhere 10 everyone is a leader 11 harvest ideas, edit applications 12 keep moving 13 slow down 14 don't be cool (cool is conservative fear, dressed in black) 15 ask stupid questions 16 collaborate 17 make an image which email won't replicate 18 allow space for ideas you haven't had yet 19 stay up late 20 work the metaphor 21 time is generic 22 repeat yourself 23 make your own tools 24 stand on someone's shoulders 25 avoid software (everyone has it) 26 don't clean your desk 27 don't enter awards (it's bad for you) 28 creativity is not device dependent 29 organisation is liberty 30 don't borrow money 31 listen carefully 32 take field trips 33 imitate 34 make mistakes faster 35 scat (break it, stretch it, crack it, fold it) 36 explore the other edge 37 coffee breaks, cab rides, dream rooms 38 avoid fields, jump fences 39 laugh 40 remember 41 power to the people |
new competence
Cut the Crap  . . .Joke Robaard (artist, NL) It's Restriction Time. Distinction Time. At the end of the century it seems as if we are seduced to make pathetic moralistic analyses. Pardon: manifestos. I think manifestos should be closely related to working methods: see the Vow of Chastity of DOGMA, which enables to discuss the work almost like a soccergame and in the same way pushes the experiment much further. If a text is only related to a desire (FTF2000) it should be accompanied by new recipies, otherwise it functions as a sermon, a complaint, an elegy, an allergy. I would prefer it to be non static; even revolutionary. Anna Muoio and Lucy A. McCauley (authors, USA) Unit of One Everywhere you look today—from buildings and landscapes, to commercial products and public services, to Web sites and print products—design has taken on new meaning. Design isn't just about decoration; it's a critical component of how we communicate, collaborate, and compete. But behind the 'look and feel' of any good design are a host of carefully conceived principles: fundamental propositions that define the essence of the design. The trick for all businesspeople today is to learn those underlying rules—to think like designers. With that in mind, Fast Company asked 15 top designers—creators of buildings, furniture, products, Web sites, costumes, and labels—to deconstruct something that exemplifies great design to them. More important, we asked them to tell us what we can learn about the art of design. Read their thoughts, and then take out a sketchbook and start designing your own world. (from Fast Company) Migration Mark Poster (author, USA) Every day, those who can afford the computer equipment and the telephone bills can be their own producers, agents, editors and audiences. Their stories are becoming more and more idiosyncratic, interactive and individualistic, told in different forums to diverse audiences in different ways. This explosion of narrativity depends upon a technology that is unlike print and unlike the electronic media of the first age: it is cheap, flexible, readily available, quick. It combines the decentralized model of the telephone and its numerous 'producers' of messages with the broadcast model's advantage of numerous receivers. (Postmodern Virtualities) |
|
Enough Is Enough 1999 Innovation and Design for Information Empowerment 21 September 1999 IDIE, for change as the cause of information culture is a worthy cause. Upon reading the First Things First 2000 make-up manifesto, I posted a harsh critique to the Info-Design mailing list, where some discussion of the pamphlet flickered. It did not leave me alone. The next morning I registered idie.net: because it is in communication networks that information empowerment emerges today. First Things First, if ever. FTF2000 fails to recognize that information rules all of our transactions and communications. It is a traditional one-to-many declaration, both in its intention and distribution. It completely overlooks the contemporary battle field, and market place, of identity, privacy, education, health care, cultural expression, entertainment, communication. It particularly made me itch considering the talented authority of its signers, and I wished they would invest their access to networks of knowledge, business and capital in a more fruitful way. Innovation and Design for Information Empowerment, IDIE focuses at the myriad centers of cultural and commercial activity, where witch doctors of sorts try to hook the consumer to their new products and services... but also where a rich diversity of adhoc shared interest groups shift the communicational landscape in continuous and pointed interaction, forcing new shortcuts to commodity fabrication and community celebration. Theirs is empowerment in the making. Markets are a means of expression and emancipation and extend far beyond the capital and the commercial. People are literally dealing with the affordances of new technology and new communication media. It is in their potluck improvisation and natural acceptance of vital possibilities, that the designers can find inspiration and stimulus to engage professionally. So far the latter are traditionally left in an intermediary position. Yet in the emerging many-to-many relations between producers, industries, 'brokers' and commerce, corporations, governments and (educational) institutions, consumers and users: designers have to re-position themselves. Re-positioning the designer demands eagerness, curiosity, guts and above all skill. To launch-and-learn new practices. In the full acknowledgement of the above, in its own interactions with these emerging developments, IDIE follows one golden rule: designers do best what they do best. Luckily, since 1964, the disciplinary envelope has been pushed considerably. Today we include many creative, technological and academic specialisms and expertises and competences and skills to the field of design. These abundant qualities IDIE aims to spark off in precise practices of cultural production and intervention, in the by definition unbound field of information media and its artistries. IDIE: If Designers' Interests Evolve... If designers consider themselves part of a knowledgeable work force for social and cultural innovation, if designers recognize which other entrepreneurs will be the players of change for the coming decades, if designers burn their tired anti-consumerist political drafts and if designers take to heart and bear in mind that their position in contemporary communication is key to an explosively growing information industry, if, finally, designers come to their senses: they should connect to IDIE and support and contribute to its actions and its positioning of designers as: 1, visualization specialists: artists 2, researchers: inventors 3, trend analysts: visionaries 4, communicators: intermediaries 5, entrepreneurs: commissioners It is the artist, who does not hesitate to introduce the language, with exclamation marks; it is the inventor, who fosters and tests new communicational habits and systems; it is the visionary, who sees the edge of developments before markets crowd there; it is the intermediary, who facilitates communication when Babel rules; it is finally a commissioner, who invests the generosity to involve other parties in critical developments. It is the designer then, who does not claim to be all of the above, nor casts as the knowledge working (wo)man's hero, who has the urgency to be as a catalyst in contemporary interaction and communication—when learning, playing, feed and need are at stake. Here I cast the die: IDIE is one-man-bandwidth. Handmade. It needs your support. Not to grow it into another institution, academy, political force or manifesto. But to help expand a network, to access industrial and business innovation, and to find those street corners where cultural identity is modeled in ways we had not conceived of. idie.net = anydomain.idie.net The idie.net domain is here to serve you and me for innovation and design, at the service of information empowerment. If you are in need of hosting your on-line projects: get in touch with me. If you have a funding secret, include IDIE in. Enough Is Enough 1999. Jouke Kleerebezem, jk@idie.net |
Introduction idie.net was registered on the fly 21 September 1999 to facilitate the discussion on contemporary design competences. Its provocation was the publication of First Things First 2000, a 'rear-view mirrored manifesto' for conscient design, mimicking both the tone and the attitude of the original 1964 pamphlet, First Things First 1964. The idie.net's 'Innovation and Design for Information Empowerment' crede means to bear upon the wide open field of design, while both the FTF's originated primarily in graphic design communities, and idie.net's nicknamed Enough Is Enough 1999 mission statement was baptized and tested for float in information design waters, more particularly on the Info-Design Café mailing list. two threads of interrogation Expect to find at idie.net frequently updated interrogations of empowerment issues. From first reactions I learned to depart in two main threads, roughly dividing empowerment between the public/individual 'users'/communities, and the professional designer. Not as a competition however. Actually one of my expectations from the start was, that a certain re-professionalization (formerly aka. 'democratization': teaching communities how to understand visual/textual information and how to produce it in their daily communication), would be part of what is called here new competence for the professional designer. Both issues are interdependent in the new informational landscape of connectivity, and will increasingly matter. Financial and cultural capital is moving in the direction of an 'information society', new technologies and services facilitate (tele-)communications beyond postal services, telephone and television. Media are migrating, and in everybody's hand—at least they should be. We are to change the habits! empowerment issues Empowerment issues resulting from cultural-capital media migration involve different relations, changing scales and shifting roles, between - individual people - individuals and communities - communities and industries - users and products - people and information - those who sell and those who buy - professionals and laymen We are supposed to understand these changes as 'market changes'. So be it. In an information market then, the conversation, the wheeling and dealing, the interrogations are many-to-many dialogues, out of which an information habit should grow. With it, designers should grow both horizontally: as community players, as well as vertically: in the corporate market competition. re-professionalization Re-professionalization (I'd change the term for a better one tomorrow, but not for democratization...) means to invest the expertise, skill, knowledge and experience of the professional designer in different communicational 'markets' (where the currency might be attention, feed-back, mutual learning, rather than money), not to bring them down. Sharing informational skills on a community basis is a learning proces, involving kicking old habits, getting off the stage, in order to guide by the side, and collaborate. Re-professionalization is fed from the everyday field of communication. new competence New competence means to upgrade design practices to hold pace with emerging industrial strategies and new business development. The media are not (at least not 'critical') mass anymore. We are facing (at least the option of) the radical distribution of production and consumption of goods, information and services. Industry and business do not follow, but lead these changes—more often than not, in the wrong direction, towards more isolated power, forcing dependence of third rate products and services on the consumer. New competence for the designer means a power struggle with industry— or simply hiring it, to improve its products. The designer as commissioner, as entrepreneur. New competences are fed from the field of technological and strategic media innovation. Jouke Kleerebezem, jk@idie.net |
Empowerment Out There Fasten Your Competences 
Who's Buying, Who'se Selling Connected Cottage Industry 
Purchase Circles Debunking Demographics 
Buy Cycles Join the Solidarity Spree 
Epinions The Epinionated Purchase 
ematter Revolution No Grey Literature?  
eLance Services Market |