Category archives: Design Theory
Discussions of Design Epistemology or more generally thoughts about design.
More text in a few areas (Expanding the early modernist and post-modernist sections)
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Design Theory.
Got a little more time to work on the thesis this evening. Broke the Play section off, then started work on making the "Functionalism" section less abrupt and more descriptive. Same with the Post Modernism introduction. Only an hour or so of work on it, though, so not a whole lot of movement.
Bogging Down in Play (Too big a topic, too quick a treatment, too long an excursion...)
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Design Theory.
Spent a while rereading the sections on Play in the thesis. They're trying to cover far too large a topic far too quickly, so they sound trite. Need to go back and cover the months and months of conversations and ruminations on the topic, not just hit the crystallized "decisions". Shouldn't be hundreds of pages ...
On Intelligence (and Of Design)
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Design Theory.
We picked up a book from the University of Toronto bookstore over the holidays, "On Intelligence", by Jeff Hawkins. I sat down today and read it (it's only around 200 pages). Basically it echoes a number of the theories from my thesis way back in 1998, but wraps it all up in a discussion of ...
Excited about Tomorrow (Even if today was a bit of a wash...)
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Design Theory,
Vindaloo,
Young Coders.
Spent the whole day on errands. Found a place to print out photos for my mother in law at $0.17 each (with 300 of them), picked up firewire cables for the video camera, dumped the wedding video to DVD so that she can take that with her too. Bit of a bug-fix for an infrequent ...
Success in Innovation (Recipes for Success in Humanism)
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Design Theory,
Young Coders.
We had a long discussion yesterday about the similarities between "social innovation" and "technical innovation" projects. There was broad general agreement that both of these are aspects of the same process, that is, that all social innovation is a form of a technical innovation, and the obverse.
I tried to make the point, though I'm ...
Messy Jobs are Never-Ending (Clean jobs a disappearing breed...)
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Design Theory,
Knight Errant,
Vindaloo.
Sitting here working I find myself reflecting on the fact that messy jobs are never "finished." By messy I mean jobs that are complex and multi-faceted and have no particular "right solution". In contrast, the clean jobs, the ones where you just need to solve a problem and know that you have the correct answer, ...
I want to think (Idle thought as I walked home...)
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Design Theory.
I spent the largest fraction of my walk home thinking about "what nexts"; what to do after I finish building provisioning and billing systems, after I finish helping build a community to raise a laptop.
I want to go back to thinking deeply. I want to spend my days exploring really complex things, things that ...
Abandoned building in a park (Machiavelli's palace???)
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Design Theory,
Knight Errant,
Vindaloo.
Highlight of yesterday's wandering was actually a wrong turn. We were wanting to get to the Pitti gardens (and then the Pitti palace, and then...) but missed the little side-gate that is the entrance to Pitti and went through the "main" gate. There was this grand building at the back of the park, and another ...
Days in the Italian Countryside (In Florence now...)
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Design Theory,
Vindaloo.
Arrived in Florence yesterday. Spent the first four days of the trip with Soni's brother, sister-in-law and niece (my niece pretty soon (I'm Jagi Maku :) ). Great people, very fun and relaxed. There are 355 pictures just of them (mostly our niece).Running into the limits of the camera rather frequently, mostly zoom-related (can't ...
I really need to set some time aside for thesis work (Juggling act has too many balls...)
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Design Theory.
I got reminded 3 times over the week that it's been months since I did any serious work on my thesis (modulo the presentation at BarCamp). Given that I'm feeling somewhat burned out on accounting software maybe I should schedule a couple of weeks off in October just to work on the thesis rewrite.
Mike C. Fletcher, the VRPlumber, is a philosopher of design turned computer programmer based in Toronto, Canada. He works primarily in the Python programming language, and maintains a large number of Open Source software packages. You can reach him at: mcfletch@vrplumber.com.