Vol.1, No.2 July 2001Greetings!!
Welcome to the second issue of The Path! The work of Syntony Quest integrates community development, lifelong learning, and ecosystemic design. What do we mean by ecosystemic design? In this issue we will begin to explore this question. Our friend Silvia Austerlic will share with us her views on design -- which are very much in syntony with the way we use the term. Design has an important role to play in today's society. Ecosystemic design is an evolutionary soft technology for the hard challenges of survival and sustainability in the third millennium. It involves learning from and with nature, so that we live and act in ways that enhance her syntonious dynamics. Ecosystemic design empowers us as conscious and active participants in evolution. Developing ecosystemic design competence is part of the syntony quest. What could be more meaningful than this?
We hope you enjoy this issue. We always welcome your feedback, suggestions and contributions.
In partnership,
Kathia & Alexander LaszloIn the age of Internet we are all designers
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We want to hear from you...In the age of Internet we are all designers!
The individual and social role of design in an evolving world
by Silvia Austerlic
silvia@got.netDesign is an elusive concept. Depending on who is
defining it and the context in which it is used, design
can mean many different things.
-- Kurt Hanks
At the dawn of the 21st Century, we live in an extremely complex socio-technical world, where the boundary between the human and the artificial is becoming difficult to tell. The most significant aspect of the new reality is captured by the word 'change.' It is not simply new sets of social and economic relationships replacing older ones, but of the new ones themselves being replaced at a faster rate, with only those "catching up with change" surviving.
In this irreversible context, design is like a metaphoric pair of glasses that can help humanity look at the ever-changing nature of reality from a third place, the designer's perspective, an experiential space that emerges from the marriage of intriguing theory and playful practice. Design is thinking about something that doesn't exist yet. The future is the space of action of design, where designers dare to compose new worlds. By composition we mean broadly putting together things that have never been put together before, in such a way that the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts. In a broad sense, we are all designers, as we take everyday decisions that shape our futures and affect those of others.
There is design at all levels and areas of human experience. Design represents a human potential manifested in the invention and introduction of new social practices -- be they objects, processes, or trends. It is a synthesis of creativity (imagining new things) and innovation (using technology to bring them into existence). Design, as a modern discipline, finds its primary space in the close relationship between technology and society. The design process is part of a complex wave of technological change, which is ultimately related to political and social changes. In the design process, there emerges an understanding of individual and social possibilities that cannot be predetermined.
The central concern of design is the conception and realization of new things, which are envisioned by the designer as desired outcomes. Design brings selectivity, focus, and direction to the process of introducing change toward the ideal future. In this context, "the old" represents the problems for which the designer will find "design solutions" that will give birth to the "new world." One of our rights as human beings is to make our dreams come true; and design's purpose is to help us get there by opening a self-discovery and exploratory process that could help make visible the roadmap to a better future.
Design intelligence involves engaging with the meaning of a design task, which is released by the act of drawing, visualizing, or modeling. The ability to abstract is a key characteristic of human consciousness, and because of that ability we make use of mental representations and symbols. Humanity shares an abstract world of language and thought through which we bring forth our world together in the social process of communication. Researchers have shown that graphic systems have their own type of thinking, a non-linear and visual rationality that complements sequential and verbal modes. This designerly process brings together intuitive thought, symbolic meaning and experiential learning. Viewing design as a form of intelligence invites us to understand genius as the ability to work on our own perceptions today so we can achieve our goals tomorrow.
Regarding the future, one of the greatest challenges I see in relation to the information technology revolution is: how to navigate global spaces in order to design local actions. Design could be a catalyst for change, to help us go beyond old ways of thinking and recreate our realities from a new place. Being a designer means daring to say YES to purposeful change. We, the designers of the future, are at a moment of juncture and transition, and our success will depend on the globally aligned local consensus (unity in diversity) we might be able to generate [editor's note: this is very much in the spirit of syntony]. We need to prepare ourselves to reinvent the future in daily activities involving the use of both information technology and imagination in terms of stories, dialogues and projects that should inspire, support and sustain the new visions of the world that are needed in society today. Imagination is that special faculty that makes it possible for us to believe that in the future the world might be better than the way we experience it today. Our individual and collective perceptions must change, get rid of the old, and learn to welcome the new. For a designer, now is always the time to believe in his or her dreams, say YES to change, and try something new.
Imagine a movie that runs a full year, beginning January 1, representing all the time since the origin of the earth... Complex multicelular organism do not appear until November. Dinosours appeared about December 13... Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans) developed 11 minutes before midnight on December 31. Civilization does not appear until one minute before midnight. The industrial era lasted about two seconds. During that era, humans have used up and scattered a large proportion of the resources in the earth's crust, altered and exploited ecosystems to serve strictly human needs, held all other species at their mercy, and driven many species to extinction. We are now well on the way to poisoning the biosphere and changing the earth's climate. In comparison to the dinosaurs who survived on the planet thirteen days, can Homo sapiens last even one day? This is a critical time when ecosystemic design is highly needed!
(Adapted from Lester W. Milbrath (1989) Envisioning a Sustainable Society: Learning our way out. New York: SUNY, p. 2).
Design begins by envisioning an ideal future. Do you have an ideal image of your future and the future of your community? If not, we invite you to start to think about it, and to start to talk with others about it. Our visions help us transcend the problems of today in order to start creating what could and should be. Ideal images of the future are like attractors that provide us with hope, guidelines, and energy to move towards them. As Richard Bach says in his book, Illusions:* "You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however."
If you are interested in learning more about design as a future creating approach, we recommend the book Designing Social Systems in a Changing World (1996, Plenum) by our mentor and friend, Bela H. Banathy. If you are really serious about learning ecosystemic design, contact us and we can co-design with you a learning agenda.
* Bach, Richard (1977). Illusions. Great Britain: Pan Books, p. 93.
Design is a bridge bewteen the sciences and the humanities. As evolutionary systems designers, we are launching a program called Art with Conscience. This project is an initiative of our Syntony Quest offices in Mexico and involves the creation of an international Community of Evolutionary Artists who want to collaborate and explore the social and ecological connections of their work so that they can communicate critical perspectives and visionary opportunities through artistic media. So far, we have three Mexican artists who have staterted designing this Community. If you are an artist, know an artist, or would like to support other artists to focus their creative energies in manifesting critical reflections of 'what is' and envisioning possibilities of 'what could and should be,' drop us a line! [Please note that there are some volunteer and sponsorship opportunities in this project!!]
The Syntony Quest website is going through major redesign! One of its features will be The Evolutionary Learning Center which will offer conceptual tools and resources for supporting your individual and community development initiatives. We are building in much more dynamism and interactivity on this webspace, and look forward to your feeback and feedforward through our new site. It will be ready by this Fall. http://www.SyntonyQuest.org
And finally, we wish to bring to turn the spotlight onto one of our partnership organizations: Alike.com. Under the inspired leadership and visionary design process of its CEO, HaiDai Nguyen, Alike is creating a technological infrastructure to support self-directed collaborative learning -- what they call Active Learning. We are thrilled to be working with them in a learning and doing symbiosis where they develop and advance the product and process answers to "what" and "how" type questions relating to this technology, and Syntony Quest develops and advances answers to the "why" and "what for" type questions. To see what they are up to, and how Syntony Quest is involved, visit their super cool interactive e-zine at http://www.alike.com.
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Syntony Quest is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization seeking to
catalyze learning processes that empower individuals and groups to
develop the competencies necessary for the co-creation of sustainable
and evolutionary futures.
USA: 1761 Vallejo Street, Suite 302, San Francisco, CA 94123
Phone/Fax: ++415/346.1547
Mexico: Santiago Roel 2757 AltaVista Lomas Monterrey, N.L. 64740
Phone/Fax: +52/8400.3431
info@SyntonyQuest.org
http://www.SyntonyQuest.orgThe Path: Action-sparking ideas of today for tomorrow
is a publication of Syntony Quest © 2001. All rights reserved.
The ideas expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the organization,
but rather of the individuals who contributed to this issue.
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