A 3-minute conference on irrational exuberance

Keynote:
For those who recall, Alan Greenspan used this phrase to describe the
activity in the financial markets almost 10 years ago and into the
period that followed. It is a convenient piece of poetic poignancy and
oh so familiar in design discussions today.

Clearly, design has been liberated from its former life, in part due
to a climate that hungers for alternatives, also out of a need to fill
a growing void that is emerging before our very eyes, the unfamiliar.
Is what we notice different or are we noticing differently? I presume
both are in play. For those who find comfort in certainties this is a
growing hell and for others who thrive on curiosity and creativity it
is heaven’s gate. Of course the void resides in you and I – we are the
unfamiliar.

Workshops:
Certainty is a shell game.
The library has no walls.
I am the laboratory.
Transparency is the new ego.
Too little knowledge invites inaccuracy.
Too much knowing invites delusion.
And finally, “Knowing the answer” is the beginning of the end. (Easter Island’s
last epiphany)

Back to the regular program - the bad syllogism.
Designers can design. All things are designed. Designers can design
all things.

This simply is not true. My fear is that designers who pretend to be
masters of the universe, without boundary or discipline, are actually
damaging the credibility of whatever design is to become. It is an
intriguing seat that we occupy at the moment, I see it in the
diversity of my role, in the ongoing discovery in my process and in
the different forms of value that I now bring to the changing
environment. However, I am cautious of my own irrational exuberance as
I go forward, as design goes forward, in my effort to define the
boundary without diminishing its trajectory.

Guest speaker:
To know that you do not know is the best.
To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.
Lao-tzu

Closing Remark:
“To not know you have the disease is the potential for an epidemic.”

Posted by Robin