Engineering, monocentric design, polycentric design

All engineering is done for some human purpose, even when it does not focus on the people who will eventually use it. Every engineering problem is defined with an eventual use in mind. An engineer develops a system that solves the defined problem. Once the engineered thing is used by someone, however this can be … Continue reading Engineering, monocentric design, polycentric design

Design, engineering and manipulation

Controlling the behavior of a system by controlling the behavior of will-less components: this is engineering. Engineering is concerned solely with the empirically observable outcome. Influencing the actions of a system by influencing the free actions of its free-willed participants, and controlling behaviors of will-less components: this is design. * Design concerns itself with harnessing … Continue reading Design, engineering and manipulation

Idea dump: intimacy, design/engineering/philosophy, social science-technologies

The following is more of a diary entry than an article. I have put too little effort into editing, and it might make sense only to me. I just wanted to get a snapshot of these ideas as they exist today, before they change or disappear. * The start of an idea: it seems that … Continue reading Idea dump: intimacy, design/engineering/philosophy, social science-technologies

Engineering and design

Engineering develops systems of interacting objects. Design develops systems of interacting subjects and objects. * When we engineer systems that ought to be designed, the systems we create demand subjective beings to function as objects. Algorithmic rule-following replaces free choice. * Social engineering has always been a horror. Social design might be our salvation.

Engineering vs designing

Soft systems are systems that include as part of the system human participants whose various interpretations and responses help regulate the workings of the system. Hard systems are systems that do not include an interpretive human element and are assumed to be regulated entirely algorithmically. Hard systems are engineered. Soft systems are designed. * The … Continue reading Engineering vs designing

Design problems vs engineering problems

Many problems are left unresolved because they are design problems misidentified and approached as engineering problems. * To conceive a situation as a design problem means to approach the situation with the intention of improving it, by acting into the situation with some kind of system that does something for someone. Breaking the problem down … Continue reading Design problems vs engineering problems

Philosophy as engineering

From William Wimsatt’s Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality: I seek methodological tools appropriate to well-adapted but limited and error-prone beings. We need a philosophy of science that can be pursued by real people in real situations in real time with the kinds of tools that we actually have-now or in a … Continue reading Philosophy as engineering

Design, existentialism, technocracy, etc.

If a philosophy is more a matter of questions than of answers — or to take this beyond mere language, that praxis is more a matter of problems than of responses — and I do see it this way — then the fact that the questions and problems that concern me most are all, without … Continue reading Design, existentialism, technocracy, etc.

Enworldment design

Another way to think about enworldment within the larger context of philosophy would to be to draw another anomalous analogy between the domain of thought and the domain of engineering. Some philosophy explores lines of thoughts out of sheer interest in the thought itself. Something about the ideal material fascinates the thinker. What can be … Continue reading Enworldment design

Approaching the designerly

In the 20th Century everyone aspired to be scientific. Unfortunately, the image of science and scientific knowledge was distorted by rationalist fantasies, and attempts at scientific practice were encumbered — and, in fact, sterilized — by misnorms. In the 21st Century we we are off to a good start, aspiring to be designerly. However the … Continue reading Approaching the designerly

Next book: Philosophy of Design of Philosophy

Now that I’ve gotten Geometric Meditations into a finished state I am starting to feel a compulsion to write a more accessible book about design, tentatively titled Philosophy of Design of Philosophy. I’m excited to be freed from the excessive formal constraints that made Geometric Meditations take so long to finish. There are several key … Continue reading Next book: Philosophy of Design of Philosophy

Polycentric design

Design is the development of 1) systems where the definition of the problem includes elements who are people with some degree of autonomy, and 2) where the production and/or delivery of the designed system involves engineered sub-systems (that is systems that do not include autonomous personal components). In other words, designed systems are nested systems … Continue reading Polycentric design

Design: thinking, crafting and actualizing

This post has also been published on my company’s blog. To be effective in any design discipline it is certainly necessary to master the universal methods of design. Whether you call these methods Human-Centered Design (HCD) or Design Thinking or invent some new term for it, the principles are always the same and they are … Continue reading Design: thinking, crafting and actualizing

Designers develop hybrid systems

Reading Verbeek’s What Things Do, I’m reminded of Latour’s handy term “hybrid”, an entity that is neither purely subjective nor purely objective, but a fusion of both. In Latour’s eye, the distinction between nature and society, or subject and object, which has seemed so self-evident since the Enlightenment, needs to be seen as a product … Continue reading Designers develop hybrid systems

Let’s stop engineering philosophies

My pet theory is that philosophies have been developed in an engineerly mode of making, with emphasis on the thought system, and to be evaluated primarily epistemically: “is it true?” The Pragmatists improved on this by asking, “does it work”? But I believe the pluralistic insight requires us to take a designerly approach to philosophy … Continue reading Let’s stop engineering philosophies