Transforming Grounds

I am apparently one of the few that has not read Yuval Noah Harari's first book " Sapiens ". I did not even realize this until I got his new book " Homo Deus: a brief history of tomorrow ". Now after I have read "Homo Deus" I understand why the first book got so much attention and praise. It is not often you find a book that takes on the biggest possible perspective of humanity, its history and future, and manages to do it without completely making a mess of it. After I read the book, I read several reviews of it, most of them were quite bad. They do not really seem to get the basic ideas in the book and therefore end up with arguments and critique that clearly David Runciman in the Guardian . Runciman presents the book in a way that, in my view, represents the ideas quite well. I will therefore not here write much about the book, instead, just read his review. A couple of my own thoughts about the book. Harari introduces the notion of "Datais...

I guess all of us are every day reflecting on how to organize our 'digital stuff', that is, our digital documents, pictures, videos, presentations, etc. Even though we know this, we are often overwhelmed by the speed of the growth of our digital stuff and even more about how to handle it. If you read blogs and magazines there are millions of pages with advice on how to organize, de-clutter, save, purge, etc. However, most of this advice are based on some individuals personal experience and experimentation and not on any broad (empirically based) understanding of what works for most people. That means that all of us can be inspired by the advice we read and then try it on our own, but sometimes we might want to know more about what 'really' works. In the new book by Ofer Bergman and Steve Whittaker we are presented with what they argue is " The science of managing our digital stuff ". The book is based on many years of research in the field. The book cove...

In these days of 'alternative facts' and a growing rejection of science and truth, it is both depressing and refreshing to read a new book by Tom Nichols "The Death of Expertise--the campaign against established knowledge and why it matters" . Nichols has a wonderful way of describing what is going on today with a dismissal of knowledge and expertise. The book is full of extraordinary examples that he examines closely in an intelligent and clear way. Nichols asks if this is a new problem and his answer is yes. He comments on what is different from earlier times when he writes: "The death of expertise, however, is a different problem that the historical fact of low levels of information among laypeople. The issue is not indifference to established knowledge; it's the emergence of a positive hostility to such knowledge. This is new in American culture, and it represents the aggressive replacement of expert views or established knowledge with the insisten...

One of the most frequent questions and comments I hear in relation to the notion of 'Design Thinking' is actually not about design, instead it is about the word 'thinking'. "If design thinking is such an efficient approach to change why is it only about thinking?" This is a very good question and in many cases a question that leads to highly uncomfortable answers. In our book, The Design Way , we argue that designing is about the hand and the mind, about thought and action. We do this by introducing the old greek notion of sophia as a form of knowledge that combines the hand and the mind. Or as we call it "the knowing hand". This idea that as an excellent designer of any kind you need both your mind (theory) and your hand (practical skills) is not new. For instance, in one of the first books on design, Vitruvius wrote: "Pytheos made a mistake by not observing that the arts are each composed of two things, the actual work and the theory of i...

I am happy to report that an article by my PhD student Jordan Beck and me has just been published in a new issue of She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation (Volume 2, Issue 3, Pages 179-270, Autumn 2016).   [If you can't download the article, email me] The title of the article is: Examining the Types of Knowledge   Claims Made in Design Research The article discusses what distinguish research in design areas when compared to other research areas. We do this by focusing on what type of knowledge claims researchers make in their publications. We found some fairly clear differences between research areas and also some distinct patterns when it comes to research in design. Here is the abstract of the article: "Abstract While much has been written about designerly knowledge and designerly ways of knowing in the professions, less has been written about the production and presentation of knowledge in the design discipline. In the present paper, we exam...

I am reading my second book by Byung-Chul Han. The title is " In The Swarm: digital prospects ". Han is a professor of philosophy and cultural studies in Berlin. His books are very short, this one is about 80 short pages. I mention that since it means that you can more see his books as long articles. So, I will only here comment on the notion of the 'digital swarm' that is the core idea of the book. Contrary to many other theories of what the digital revolution has led to, Han argues that it does not lead to increased broad political and community involvement. The reason for this is that what we see as a consequence of digital media is not a establishing of a 'mass' or 'crowd' or any other social construction that has a 'soul' or a 'spirit'. Instead, the digital swarm consists of 'isolated individuals', there is no 'we'. There is no "internal coherence. It does not speak with a voice " (p 10). This ...