Latest thinking

From the RSA to the RCA

Blog

05 Feb 2009

Just a quick post to say that, after a tip-off from a colleague, this evening I dropped in to the Royal College of Art's interim show. Running from the 5th to the 11th February, the show features work from the RCA's Architecture, Innovation Design Engineering (used to be Industrial Design Engineering), Design Interactions, Printmaking and Animation students.

Man Hands On Happiness To Man...

Blog

05 Feb 2009

... As the poet nearly said. What he actually said was "misery", of course, but Monday's Children's Society report, 'A Good Childhood' , while full of misery, was also a reminder that how we interact and why we do it has the power to transform our lives - for good or bad.

Meso Soup

Blog

04 Feb 2009

Steve Broome

 

The recession and social change

Blog

04 Feb 2009

Matthew Taylor raises an interesting question on his blog: Do we ever learn from crises in history? Or do we just lurch from too much of one socio-economic attitude to too much of another (from excessive individualism to excessive egalitarianism, say)? He then connects this to the idea of a good society: If the recession is an opportunity to change things for the better, is this change just a lurch from the previous ‘anchoring orientation’ we want to replace, to its opposite (which will turn out to be just as one-sided and problematic down the line)? Or are we learning from the onesidedness of the past?

Example #4 - Infant Simulators

Blog

04 Feb 2009

What must be fed, burped, rocked and have its nappy changed around the clock... and "comes in seven different head styles"? The answer to this rather grisly juxtaposition is the RealCare Baby; a sophisticated infant simulator designed to help teenagers understand the difficult reality of looking after a baby.

Civic goods and civic good

Blog

30 Jan 2009

In her New Statesman preview of the coming Tate Modern exhibition Rodchenko and Popova, Rachel Aspen recounts how the October Revolution brought art into everyday life in complete and programmatic way which is bracing for a designer to imagine today: “Their work was no longer to be confined to the elite realm of galleries and studios. The entire fabric of everyday existence – from mass transportation and housing projects to teacups and book jackets – was to be redesigned to serve a new vision of Russian life”.

Reporting back on the Teachers' TV debate

Blog

27 Jan 2009

Matthew Taylor

I said I would report back on the Teachers’ TV debate last night. The gig was worth it even if only to see the magnificent Capital City Academy building and facilities in Willesden. Call me a liberal old softie, but I find it inspiring to see wonderful facilities like this serving a diverse working class community.

Subjects or competencies - a false dichotomy?

Blog

26 Jan 2009

Matthew Taylor

I’m slightly nervous ahead of a date to appear on Teachers’ TV this evening to talk about the curriculum and, in particular, discrete subjects versus cross curricular teaching. Two of the other panellists – Professor Alan Smithers and Mick Waters of the QCA are national experts on the curriculum, while a third, Phil O’Hear, is an Academy head teacher and a man of outspoken, if not always consistent, opinions. Fortunately the presence of Saira Khan, a runner up from the Apprentice, means I’m not the only enthusiastic amateur.

Social networks, signalling theory and deception

Blog

23 Jan 2009

Something I have come across recently is signalling theory. Part of the theory (as I understand it) is that humans communicate almost entirely through conventional signals where there is no inherent cost if communication is dishonest or not (compare a ‘natural’ signal such as one antelope communicating to its cohorts that there is a pack of hunting lions nearby – the costs to the ‘honesty’ or otherwise of this signal are immediate and extremely high). Signalling theory says that the costs of deception must be high enough to keep signals within the expected range of honesty of signallers and receivers.