Reflection In Action: a shared platform for design discussion
"Reflection In Action is a conversation between two friends and colleagues - Eilidh and Helle.
It started when Eilidh was advising Helle on her thesis project at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID). The two of them had many, long, curious and insightful discussions where many ideas emerged about the world of design practice, the methods used and the challenges that accompany it.
After Helle graduated, she like Eilidh was hired by CIID to work within the Consultancy. After a long day of work during a research trip to the US, they found themselves in a dodgy college bar, drinking cheap beer and sketching the idea for Reflection In Action on a napkin. Eilidh and Helle wanted a place to house their ideas and discussion - A platform for reflection and action where they could develop a viewpoint on their daily creative practice and peruse their personal creative interests.
Reflection In Action is a place where they can show credit to the inspiring people they meet, the places they travel, the tools they use, and the experiences that influence who they are as designers."
(Helle Rohde Andersen and Eilidh Dickson)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Performativity involves a system logic that reduces questions of justice to questions of efficiency and has no interest in the unknown
"For Lyotard, performativity involves a system logic that reduces questions of justice to questions of efficiency and has no interest in the unknown because it falls outside the system as currently constituted. Against this he 'sketches the outline of a politics that would respect both the desire for justice and the desire for the unknown' (1984: 67). This involves turning away from performativity and towards the other possible legitimating criteria, consensus and paralogy. Lyotard argues that consensus, the criteria preferred by Habermas, is inadequate (1984: 60). It rests on a belief that it is possible to find a metalanguage that could translate all of the 'heteromorphous classes of utterance' into one another, and the assumption that it is possible for all speakers in scientific games to agree about this meta-language and that consensus is the goal of science (1984: 65). Against this, Lyotard argues that 'consensus is only a particular state of discussion, not its end. Its end, on the contrary is paralogy' (1984: 65–6)."
(Campbell Jones, p.512)
Campbell Jones (2003). "Theory after the Postmodern Condition." Organization 10(3): 503-525.
Jean-François Lyotard (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Fig.1 China's Pang Qing and Tong Jian perform in the pairs short programme during the Cup of China figure skating competition in Beijing November 5. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
UK Protection of Freedoms Bill – Public Reading Stage
"On Friday 11th February 2011, the Coalition Government published the Protection of Freedoms Bill. ... Some of the measures came from the 14,000 ideas left on the Your Freedom website.
The Government is committed to continuing this public engagement with the content of the Protection of Freedoms Bill. This website gives you the opportunity to comment on each clause contained in the Bill. Your comments will get collated at the end of this public consultation and fed through directly to the Parliamentarians who will carry the Bill through the House of Commons (go to the Parliament website to learn about the passage of a bill). These comments will assist and challenge MPs, aiding their scrutiny and debate on the details of the Bill. This is a pilot for the 'public reading stage' that the Government wants to introduce to give the public an increased say in all bills"
(UK Cabinet Office, 2011)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Lessons in participation from 'Our Budget, Our Economy'
"Efforts to improve political engagement don't come much bigger than the work done by AmericaSpeaks.org, which has set itself a mission to 'reinvigorate American democracy by engaging citizens in the public decision-making that most impacts their lives'.
One of its recent efforts was a 'national town meeting' to discuss ways of dealing with America's federal budget deficit. It saw 3,500 Americans gathered at 57 sites across the country on June 26, 2010.
Participants from a range of social and political backgrounds debated 42 options for closing the deficit (a report to Congress is available), and at the end of the day 91 per cent said they were 'very satisfied' or 'satisfied' with the tone and quality of the discussion.
And in an interesting result that shows the value of deliberation and discussion, only 15 per cent said their views were not at all influenced by others and just three per cent said they did not learn anything during the meeting."
(eDemocracyBlog.com, 7 December 2010)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
"The Berkman Center was founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. We represent a network of faculty, students, fellows, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and virtual architects working to identify and engage with the challenges and opportunities of cyberspace.
We investigate the real and possible boundaries in cyberspace between open and closed systems of code, of commerce, of governance, and of education, and the relationship of law to each. We do this through active rather than passive research, believing that the best way to understand cyberspace is to actually build out into it.
Our faculty, fellows, students, and affiliates engage with a wide spectrum of Net issues, including governance, privacy, intellectual property, antitrust, content control, and electronic commerce. Our diverse research interests cohere in a common understanding of the Internet as a social and political space where constraints upon inhabitants are determined not only through the traditional application of law, but, more subtly, through technical architecture ('code').
As part of our active research mission, we build, use, and freely share open software platforms for free online lectures and discussions. We also sponsor gatherings, ranging from informal lunches to international conferences, that bring together members of our diverse network of participants to swap insights - and sometimes barbs - as they stake out their respective visions for what the Net can become. We also teach, seeking out online and global opportunities, as well as supporting the traditional Harvard Law School curriculum, often in conjunction with other Harvard schools and MIT."
(Berkman Center for Internet & Society)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
