Prof. Kristo Ivanov, Informatik: ETHICS AND POLITICS IN DESIGN AND SYSTEM CULTURES (based on "Creating a design culture")

This seminar, and a possible follow-up seminar later on, takes advantage of the opportunity afforded by Erik Stolterman's request for comments to his and Harold Nelson's manuscript of a book on "Creating a design culture", in order to highlight some political ethical problems that are implicit in certain design-conceptions.

A background and basis for my comments and problematizations will be my own papers on some cores ideas of later years' emphasis on design, that I recently summarized in http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/Chu-SysAppDes.html (reprints available in the stands in front of our lunch room) on the basis of the following earlier partial essays http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/page6.html http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/chinese.html http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/PerspSem2000.html (especially items 6.12 and 7, but also 5.7, 6.2, 6.4, 6.9, 6.12, and 8.4.13 on eclecticism).

Selected pieces of text from the manuscript will be related to dialectical systems theory as exemplified in my extended word-index to West Churchman's book "The design of inquiring system", at http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/chuindex.html or http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/chuindex.pdf by the keywords "design-designer", "change", "teleology-purposes", "implementation", "action", "ethics", "guarantor", "politics-power", "romanticism", and "aesthetics".

The participants to the seminar, especially those who are following ongoing course on "Creating a design culture" which is based on the manuscript are encouraged to complete its reading prior to the seminar. It is recommended that everyone has the manuscript available during the seminar: see Erik's invitation to furnish copies, in his collective e-mail the the department's alias on September 6th. The seminar will he held preferably without overheads but, rather, with verbal references and reading from selected pages of the manuscript which, then, are necessary for following the argument.

Välkommna!
John Cumberbatch