Design is Dead. What is next for the Design of the world?
Upon reflection, I think I only ever saw myself as a player of words, a drawer of plans, a conceiver of ideas. As for implementation, that was for others, others who were more skilled in the practicalities of making, fixing, bringing forth etc. I was not that — not the doer. I was the designer who sat in a drawing office referring to plans, replying to questions about the dimension of such and such. That vision of myself, held from early days, has to a considerable extent is how it has been, and still is. Except now, in autumn of my career, there is a concession. Design is nothing unless it is put into practice, unless it is proven. In the execution of the design, the design becomes modified. Modified by craft and experience. It is like seeing the line flowing from the nib of the pen but not exactly as intended. A second line is then drawn improving the first. Each review is a little conversation. Each build of the entity, the system, the creation, is a new opportunity to learn. This is craft.
In the early days of my career, I did not understand craft. I thought the answer was drawn, contained in my plans. In recent practice it seems to me that craft is all that there is! The idea of design is now a redundant concept. Dieu est Mort. That is because recent work is not about the design of a singular thing or a defined entity. Recent work is about modifying a system of systems. The system is living; no not living; to call it living is tempting but wrongheaded; it is a thing that requires the passing of time to be understood. Such a system, cannot be designed because you cannot pass time in advance. It must be observed and then contemplated. How does a system first emerge? Some systems don’t get a singular designed moment of birth, they are observed and someone declares, after the fact, that that is the system. System design is more akin to a piece of Action Research. At first you notice the system, then you place your intervention, then you review the results, then act again. There is no start or finish point. The design project is never done, nor can it be ever started. We can only be aware of the interventions into the system and try to fairly observe change that is subsequent. This work cannot really be called design. Reality has not kindly preserved the Design Office of my early career. Design evokes a position of control and intentionality that is not even close to the reality of modifying a System. Design is too top heavy as a concept. How can you design an AI system? The boundaries are fuzzy. The Design School philosophy of control and drafted supersessions seem inadequate, in fact wholly wrong for this work. Craft however has a role. Reflective practice has a role. Caution about one’s own effect on the reading of the system is appropriate.
I have heard people refer to system design. But it is not design! It is not Design if we are just contributing to a modification of an existing system. At best we are co-designing. If that system is an AI system then perhaps we are just the human part of a cyborg effort. Catalysing is close. System science might be the general domain of study. System Kinetics has a nice echo back to Cybernetics. But kinetics implies a moving part. Maybe the system has no moving parts. System Intervention Research and Action is the best I can come up with at this time.
Circular Systems, General System Theory, Complexity, Total Systems, Social Systems, Systems ecology — this is our future. Interdependence, the flux of events, the game of life, a system of systems, we are tied to the flow. Dynamic equilibrium, Action-present, Gaia Theory, Emergence, the road is made as you walk. A whole system judgement.
AH 20/06/2022