Category Archives: Uncategorized

RELATED TERMS: Actantiality; Agonism and Design; Incompletion “I prefer to think of myself as being inside a tangled knot; tangled knots fascinate me. It’s necessary to recount the tangle of existence, both as it concerns individual lives and the life of generations. Searching to unravel things is useful, but literature is made out of tangles.”Continue reading “Entanglement”

RELATED TERMS: Design, Narratives, Pasts Henry Mance (2021) mentions two conflicting narratives by means of which we may project our possible futures: the continuation of an historical trend providing material and socio-political improvements; and the difficulties ahead suggested by the evidence of climate science and by ongoing geopolitical tensions. Narratives are one way to manageContinue reading “Design, Narratives, Futures”

RELATED TERMS: David Roochnik (2007: xi) states that techne, variously translated as skill, art, craft, expertise, profession, science, knowledge, technical knowledge, is not only a crucial term in the Platonic dialogues but has also been crucial in the development of Western culture itself. We currently use descendants of the term to discuss the technologies withContinue reading “Techne”

RELATED TERMS: ‘Every decision you make is a design decision’ Jean-Luc Nancy, in critically rearticulating the political philosophy of Carl Schmitt, that is, Schmitt’s conception of the theologicopolitical, argues that, in terms of “becoming-secular”, the necessity of decision … is the impossibility of assigning a Subject of law and the State that would not beContinue reading “Decision and Design”

RELATED TERMS: Metaverse Ben Thompson, a technology commentator, suggests that there have been three epochs in the evolution of the networked world in which we currently live (Naughton, 2021). Each is defined by its core technology and ‘killer app’. The first epoch was that of the personal computer (PC), beginning in August 1981. Its coreContinue reading “Digital Network Technologies”

RELATED TERMS: Psychology One of the domains of psychology most relevant to design practices is environmental psychology, which is a relatively new branch of psychology. Its key objective is to improve the relationship between humankind and the environment using theory, research and practice. Among the major theories in environmental psychology are geographical determinism, which believesContinue reading “Environmental Psychology”

RELATED TERMS: Humanism; Post-Humanism; Posthuman Michel Foucault argues that the term humanism should not be confused with that of Enlightenment. The importance of grasping the notions of humanism and Enlightenment for design practices is that it bears directly upon how the human is understood in the design process and in relation to the created design,Continue reading “Enlightenment”

RELATED TERMS: Boever et al. (2012: x) suggest that intellectual currents in the humanities in recent decades have moved towards a context that is more receptive to the thought of Gilbert Simondon. This shift has been characterised by Brian Massumi as turning away from a prevailing acceptance of ‘constructivism’ towards what he calls ‘inventivism’. TheContinue reading “Inventivism and Constructivism”

RELATED TERMS: Anime and Manga: Barry Watt, a psychotherapist working mainly with young homeless people, situates the popularity of the South Korean drama series Squid Game within a larger movement of young people towards Japanese and Korean anime and manga. They are looking, he conjectures, for a response to their experience that is not beingContinue reading “Neurodiversity and Narrativity”

RELATED TERMS: Somatosensory System; In order to interact sensibly with the world and to manipulate objects skilfully, information needs to be shared between the somatosensory and the motor systems, forming a complex somato-sensori-motor system. The two systems communicate via a network of extensive connections between the sensory and motor cortices but also by motor cortexContinue reading “Sensorimotor System”