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Meaning and its Disappearance

We’ve been looking a lot recently at methods of design, and how designers come to invent. Dick Buchanan talked to us yesterday about ‘topics’ (in the Aristotelian sense), and how (good) designers use topics, or placements, to escape the shackles of meaning. As an example, if I say ‘book,’ you will probably form a rather well-defined picture in your head. Now what if I were to say ‘physical artifact used to transfer information?’ In this second case, you might form a picture in your head, but it would certainly be more ambiguous. As a designer, the second phrase is where I might arrive through the use of placements if I were attempting to redesign the book. In other words, if I can find a way to strip away the meaning that I associate with a thing, then I will be able to see it in new ways, which is the heart of invention.

A similar thought that occurred to me is this: Which came first, black or white? Well, black of course, because prior to the big bang there was nothing. But if there was nothing, then there could be no color, so white came first, as the big bang was a blazing outpouring of light. But you can’t have light without darkness, and darkness is black, so black came first.

Obviously this train of thought could continue, going back and forth, forever. It doesn’t matter however, because to ask which of two colors came first has no meaning to us. Color as a concept does not, in our minds, exist within the otherwise perceived linearity of time, and so the question is meaningless.

But what if I ask which came first, televisions or paper? Well paper of course, it is one of the oldest technologies of mankind, and televisions are an invention of the twentieth century.

Why is the second question more meaningful? Because we perceive paper and televisions to have a place in linear time (as opposed to colors, which we do not perceive in this way). And so it is that we put meaning into things ourselves, though one meaning is no more ‘natural’ to a particular thing than another. Why should paper have a place in linear time and not color? When this meaning is removed, we are left with topics, also known as placements. Topics can take many forms, but I imagine them to be broad ideas without a particular meaning necessarily associated to them. They are ways of looking at things. The use of topics allows designers to gain new insights. For instance, if I were to redesign the television, I might start by asking what does it do? In this case ‘what does it do’ is a topic. Within that topic, there are many meanings I could identify: I could say that it is a device for transmitting information, or an artifact that displays dynamic imagery, or even a piece of furniture used to give the average living room some point of focus. All of these are valid meanings to pick from the topic of ‘what does it do’ in regards to a television.

The real danger, as Dick points out, is that if you get too good at doing this (stripping away the meaning of things), then you’re crazy because meaning is how we deal with reality.

And now that I’ve made a mess of trying to explain all of that, here are the far more eloquent words of Kenneth Burke, from his introduction to “The Grammar of Motives.”

“Distinctions, we might say, arise out of a great central moltenness, where all is merged.  They have been thrown from a liquid center to the surface, where they have congealed.  Let one of these crusted distinctions return to its source, and in this alchemic center it may be remade, again becoming molten liquid, and may enter into new combinations, whereat it may again be thrown forth as a new crust, a different distinction.  So that A may become non-A.  But not merely by a leap from one state to the other.  Rather, we must take A back into the ground of its existence, the logical substance that is its causal ancestor, and on to a point where it is consubstantial with non-A; then we may return, this time emerging with non-A instead.”

November 13th, 2007
Posted by Paul in Design Thinking, Seminar I | 2 Comments »  

Random Photo

I was digging through files from the summer and came across this photo I took while hiking with my friend Matt. I personally think this is the most beautiful and stimulating piece of wood I’ve ever seen.

November 12th, 2007
Posted by Paul in Photography | 1 Comment »  

Long time, no blog

So, I’ve obviously been pretty lazy about updating the old blog here. The truth is that I’ve been so ridiculously busy that I simply haven’t had time (I prioritize sleep over blogging, and I barely sleep so…). Anyway, I’ve completed several projects that I was pretty happy with, and would put them up here, but the deliverables were videos, and I’m still struggling with getting Flash videos to embed properly in this WordPress blog, so those will have to wait. What I do have are a number of thoughts about design that I’ve been jotting in a notebook and will transcribe here. Most of this thinking comes as a result of Richard Buchanan’s Seminar course, which I have started to enjoy – I think I’m getting it all now, and I’m really getting a kick out of the deep intellectual side of design (it didn’t hurt that I got high marks on my paper either).

To paraphrase Dick: Design problems are indeterminate, hence wicked.

I was thinking about this, and came up with the following to answer why design problems are indeterminate (let me make clear that this is not precisely what Dick says).

Because design problems are anything to which design thinking is applied. Design thinking, is subjectless, but revolves around finding form in infinite complexity. Why infinite complexity? Because anything artificial and the interactions within which it is situated are inextricably linked to human thinking, which is infinitely complex by nature (hence why psychology will never be a hard science as well). Thus, design problems are wicked. - If anyone else can follow that chain of reasoning I congratulate you. I fear that it’s probably too deeply informed by the seminar readings to make much sense to anyone outside of my classmates.

And to follow the last thought:
Human thinking is infinitely complex because any thought is influenced by all thought that came before it. Even if all thought that a human had were to be cataloged, each thought is continually influenced and affected by all other thought (whether before or after in time), causing an infinite loop. Furthermore, since thought can be affected by other thoughts (whether before or after in linear time), thought can be said to exist outside of linear time, and thus within dimensional time, which is, for all intents and purposes, infinite.

And my last thought for the day:

Design and economics are essentially similar. Design takes the extant infinite complexity of human interaction and uses it to plan the way forward (which is based in, and affects the future). Economics take the extant infinite complexity of human interaction and uses it to predict the future (based on a given plan of the way forward). And hey, whadoyaknow, there’re another pair of infinite loops in there if you look closely. I’m beginning to think that infinite loops may be the heart of why design is potentially so useful - Design can handle infinite loops because it is (where useful) a holistic approach - no science is or can be.

November 12th, 2007
Posted by Paul in CMU, Design Thinking, Seminar I | 2 Comments »