Electricity and the Hybrid Imagination Mixing Technology and Culture
Andrew Jamison Aalborg University
Based on: PROCEED (a Program of Research on Challenges and Opprtunities in Engineering Education in Denmark)
The aims of PROCEED are to: • improve the education of engineers, so that they might better be able to meet the challenges they can be expected to face in their working lives, • compare the different ways in which the challenges have been responded to in Denmark as well as internationally, • identify examples of “best practice” in regard to reforming engineering education, and • reach out to engineering educators in a series of interactive workshops and seminars
Challenges Facing Engineering The sustainability challenge – how to deal with
environmental problems, energy and other resource exploitation and, not least, climate change
The societal challenge – how to deal with the
permeation of our societies by technology with new design skills in socially responsible ways
The technoscientific challenge – how to combine
scientific understanding and technical skills in new forms of competence
Contending Response Strategies A market-oriented, or commercial strategy: emphasizing entrepreneurship and innovation
An academic-oriented, or professional strategy: focusing on expertise and independence
A socially-oriented, or ”hybrid” strategy :
combining technical training with cultural engagement
Different Conceptions of Design Product-driven, ”technical fixing” the designer as consultant or entrepreneur
Project-driven, ”design for design’s sake” the designer as a skilled craftsman or artisan
Problem-driven, ”hybrid imagining” the designer as change agent, or activist
Hybrid Imagining, or ChangeOriented Research
Problem-driven, rather than disciplinary, or market-driven
A focus on processes of socio-cultural change
Reflective, rather than explanatory or commercial ambition
Participatory, interventionist methods
Personal engagement in what is studied
Hybrid Imaginations in the Renaissance Artists and engineers in combination Connecting magic to humanist movement Leading to the scientific revolution and the experimental method
For example: Leonardo da Vinci, the artist-engineer
Hybrid Imaginations in Industrialization
Scholars and craftsmen in combination Connecting science and romanticism Creating engineering sciences And engineering universities
A Hybrid Imagination: Hans Christian Ørsted (1777-1851) • mixed Naturphilosophie with experimentation • to look for the ”spirit in nature”... • discovered electromagnetism (1820) • and founded DTU in 1829
Hybrid Imaginations in Industrialization, 2 connecting technology and society mixing technical skills with social consciousness creating, among other things, the professional designer and the use of wind energy for electricity production
A Hybrid Imagination: William Morris (1834-1896)
A romantic poet turned designer Combined artistry and socialism Mixed tradition and innovation A utopian who was also practical
A major influence on:… Interior and industrial design Architecture: Wright, Gehr y, Utzon Urban and regional planning Socialist politics and culture The ”education of desire”
From ”Useful Work versus Useless Toil”: ”Our epoch has invented machines which would have appeared wild dreams to the men of past ages, and of those machines we have as yet made no use. They are called ”labor-saving” machines – a commonly used phrase which implies what we expect of them; but we do not get what we expect. What they really do is to reduce the skilled labourer to the ranks of the unskilled.”
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A Hybrid Imagination: Poul La Cour (1846-1908) - a �populist� scientist-engineer - taught physics at Askov folk high school - wrote Historisk Mathematik and Historisk Fysik - built laboratory for wind energy experimentation - founded Danish Wind Electricity Society in 1903
The Poul La Cour Museum, Askov
Hybrid Imaginations in Modernization (re)combining ar tistic expression andengineering focusing on the human and cultural dimensions of
technology
creating professional schools and colleges for design and bringing humanities into engineering education
A Hybrid Imagination: The Bauhaus (1919-1933) "art and technology – a new unity”
A Hybrid Imagination: Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) American writer and social critic one of the last ”public intellectuals” one of the first ”human ecologists” a cultural perspective on technology active in regional planning movements
From The Culture of Cities, 1938
�Today we begin to see that the improvement of cities is no matter for one-sided reforms: the task of city design involves the vaster task of rebuilding our civilization. We must alter the parasitic and predatory modes of life that now play so large a part, and we must create...an effective symbiosis, or co-operative living together.�
Hybrid Imaginings in the 1960s and 1970s combining the ”two cultures” (C.P. Snow) connecting technology to the ”counter-culture” ”grass-roots” or community-oriented engineering and a social movement for ”appropriate technology”
Hybrid Imaginations: Computer Liberation Stewart Brand, creator of Whole Earth Catalog
Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder
outgrowth of 1960s counter-culture based on the ”hacker ethic” led to making of personal computers idea to make information free and open lives on in open source ”movement”
Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib (1974)
Grass-roots engineering Mobilization of traditions of popular education People’s high schools, cooperative movement Linking of universities and civil society Organization for renewable energy (OVE)a key actor Many local socio-technical experiments Especially in wind energy as alternative to nuclear
�Appropriate technology� in the 1970s
The New Alchemy Institute Ark
Nordic Folkcenter for Renewable Energy
A Hybrid Imagination Today: At the discursive, or macro level
connecting technical solutions explicitly to social and
environmental problems
At the institutional, or meso level
organizing spaces for collective learning across society
At the personal, or micro level
combining scientific-technical competence with socio-
cultural understanding: cultivating change agents
For example: Fritjof Capra • physicist-turned-environmentalist • author of many popular books • founder of Center for Ecoliteracy
“Since the outstanding characteristic of the biosphere is its inherent ability to sustain life, a sustainable human community must be designed in such a manner that its technologies and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature's inherent ability to sustain life.�
For example: The Alley Flat Initiative The Alley Flat Initiative is a joint collaboration between the University of Texas Center for Sustainable Development, the Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation, and the Austin Community Design and Development Center. The Alley Flat Initiative proposes a new sustainable, green affordable housing alternative for Austin.
From the website: The initial goal of the project was to build two prototype alley flats (aka granny flats)- one for each of two families in East Austin - that would showcase both the innovative design and environmental sustainability features of the alley flat designs. These prototypes will demonstrate how sustainable housing can support growing communities by being affordable and adaptable. The first of these prototypes celebrated its house warming with the community in June of 2008, and the second prototype is slated to begin construction in early 2009.
Professor Steven Moore
Moving into the second alley flat...
The long-term objective of the Alley Flat Initiative is to create an adaptive and self-perpetuating delivery system for sustainable and affordable housing in Austin. The "delivery system" would include not only efficient housing designs constructed with sustainable technologies, but also innovative methods of financing and home ownership that benefit all neighborhoods in Austin.
http://www.thealleyflatinitiative.org/
Appropriating reality