Alois has an outstanding thinking out idea post about speculative writing and design fiction. First wends its way through a critique, which I think raises legitimate questions that most who use this methodology are aware of (its one of the reasons why design fiction has emerged as a method), to conclude with:
Design Fiction is an opportunity to evaluate your own ideology of the world, and what the future will be like, and just how inclusive or exclusive that ideology is.
Really enjoyed Georgina’s post after reading the Graham article about the essay. Yes, the essay is a way to come up with answers, not writing the already known. As humanities students it is our lab, our experimental space, where we test and invent. We don’t do this somewhere else then report on it (which is what most of us have been taught an essay is) but the essay is actually where we do the thinking. This is one reason I like blogs. And posts like Georgina’s. Simply because it is thinking in the moment of the writing and discovering something. That should be the point of writing in a university in the humanities. Experiment and thinking in the language of our practice (writing). The essay is a technology, treat it as that and the question becomes what do you want to do with it.
Abby likes that in everyone’s blogs connections are being made. In spite, of regardless, of anything else. We are communicative beings, deep deep down. We are pattern making and recognising communicative beings. And most of your learning, in this subject, happens in your blogs.
This could be from my song book about how to teach, and how to learn. A quote from Alex Billington, via Zoe. Thank you. Remember, if you take the advice seriously and not just as brochure speak, then it won’t always work, and it won’t stay still.
Rebecca feels bleak. The amateur is precisely that. They do it as a hobby. Your difference is you want a way to turn a passion in to a profession. Right now our graduates find good work, easily, not necessarily because of production skills but the raft of other skills and understands that you bring to the table. How to collaborate, how to work in/on the network, how to think creatively and critically even when it is all change. This is what the degree will give you, and these are the employable skills. The gifted amateur doesn’t have these.
In relation to my comment that something “turns up and things flip”. This does not dismiss design fiction. Design fiction is one way we make and think those things that will make this difference. It is only a contradiction is you want to be the person playing catch up to the world out there, or you want to contribute to helping change it.
Holly enjoyed it, and yes, it’s very Q and A isn’t it? Patrick took away the comments from Brian and Adrian about experience design, the experience economy, and that is is what you need to develop and understand (to I guess partially alleviate Rebecca’s bleakness). Shannen took away the ways in which design fiction (let’s call it speculative thinking, as I think Elliot’s observation that we have to be able to imagine and envision the future as media makers is very astute, and Brian’s recognition that design fiction lets you think very differently, and creatively, about what counts as evidence as ways to shift it out of ‘design’ and into what we do) helps you think ahead, even three years, while William remains estranged.
Jake joins the content question with double loops, crack cocaine, information and what he’s going to do next. (Notice I didn’t include Jake and crack cocaine in the link text, this is important because Google pays a lot of attention to the text that is the source of a link.) James is still disappointed, wanting more perhaps vigour, but it’s the first time so much like the first Q and A, the first IQ (which is pretty laboured), it takes time.
Kate liked the symposium in its first guise, and has written some good introductory notes around Actor Network Theory. This is a very influential theory in technology studies as it provides a way to think about the technology/ies as being participants and causal entities, without having to decide that it is all ‘defined by technology’ or ‘defined by culture’. In ANT culture and technology are actors. Samuel has a good list of take aways, particularly like the phrasing that “content is not king, connection is”. Anna also picks up the stuff about experience. This, I really don’t know how to make it plain, is also how you need to approach uni and your learning. Anyone can package the content, and there is now no scarity of access to media making tools, so that leaves the experience that we can offer. Same with media. If we can all make media, why do I use yours? Olivia, too, has a list of take aways around design, futures, and speculation. Finally, Zoe has a very succinct, but broad, list of things that mattered – agency, context, looking back to understand forwards.
This week we move into writing pages in niki. I’ve started writing some help pages, and added a form so you can request new help pages as/if the need arises.
From the curious draw.
From the Washington Post, 40 maps that explain the world (from a US-centric perspective, but some interesting maps here).
Impressive, most of the things requested have been done, earning their ‘doers’ 2 marks. Which means a small but burgeoning collection of tips emerging.
The questions that will be used a prompts for discussion for this weeks symposium:
Tomorrow we are hoping to be a full complement, and so the first symposium. One of the classes has framed some questions, partly out of the design fiction reading, partly more general, and we will be discussing these questions as a group (Jasmine, Elliot, Brian and Adrian). At any point in this discussion you are very welcome and invited to put your hand up and ask questions, offer a point of view, or any other statement that is appropriate.
The symposiums are the reverse of the usual lecture in that we will be discussing the reading the week after they are set. This is because the model is we all do the reading, well all discuss and think about it (in blogs, in class, over coffee, with your friends), and then after having thought about it, then the symposium will talk about. In other words it is not the model of lecture to tell you what the reading is about, maybe do the reading but really don’t need to since the lecture told me what to think, repeat. To be the scratched record, you learn by meeting and wondering and making sense of what you don’t know. You do not learn by being told what to think, or of only reading things you already know.