Key Pages
- |Changes [May 05, 2008]
Ten Things 2006: Pr...A class running Winter 2006
Tuesdays and Thursdays 11.00 - 11.50 Building 500
contact - mshanks@stanford.edu 650 996 8763 Building 500 (Archaeology Center) Metamedia Lab
TA: Sebastian De Vivo sdevivo@stanford.edu
TF: Chris Witmore cwitmore@stanford.edu
Office hours: I am around most days - just come on up to the lab. Otherwise phone or email for a time to meet.
This course will explore the connections between science, technology, society and culture by looking at ten things. It takes an historical and anthropological perspective, going back to the earliest stone tools and tracking their genealogical connection with contemporary high-tech design in order to think outside the box. Tracking the design of these ten things takes us through an interdisciplinary mix that includes archaeology, cultural anthropology, science studies, the history and sociology of technology, cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, the fine and applied arts.
The course will cover a range of disciplinary fields and will include readings from actor network theory (Callon and Latour), British cultural studies (Raymond William and after, the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies), material culture studies (archaeology and anthropology, British and French traditions), anthropologies of science, new sociologies of technology (Donald Mackenzie, John Law) cognitive science (from cognitive evolution to human factors research in design, from Leroi-Gourhan to Don Norman).
The overall aim is to address some abstract and theoretical questions concerning the process of design, and in particular the interrelation of science and technology in making and consuming goods.
The course will develop an argument against ethics - notions of value, interest and social responsibility - being the bridge between science, technology and society.
Radical rethinking of the usual connections between science, technology and society is required!
The course will argue for a particular understanding of the relationship between people and things that incorporates conventional understanding of the social and cultural aspects of science and technology. Close empirical scrutiny of the design of these ten things will suggest an abandonment of some cherished distinctions, such as reason and desire, science and art, nature and culture, material and value. Instead we will consider how things work to hold together society. Design is a process of "heterogeneous engineering" that implicates active non-human forms and agents, subsuming these kinds of common distinctions and understandings.
The argument is captured somewhat in the aphorism "making things makes people".
The argument is captured in the notion that an artifact is far from a discrete thing, but "gathers" relationships and forges connections between disparate and heterogeneous phenomena, forms and experiences.
But the argument will not be held in the abstract - the course will explore design methodologies and transdisciplinary strategies that work with these dynamic interconnections between fields normally kept separate.
Another argument of the course is that a broad and comparative view of the history of design needs to be at the core of our understanding of the connections between science/reason, technology and society and culture. We need a big picture and long term view to understand trends and issues and to develop methods and concepts for tackling questions and problems raised by contemporary science and technological development.
This accounts for the anthropological and archaeological component of the course - the only basis for such a broad big picture.
The course structure is a simple one of working week by week through ten artifacts. Each "case study" will develop different aspects of the course's thesis concerning design.
These are the ten artifacts and the themes and questions they raise.
Tuesday
Introduction
1 A Palaeolithic handaxe - we have always been cyborgs
What is a tool? How do people (as a species and in evolutionary perspective) get on with things? What is the relation of tool making and use to reason and cognition?
Wynn, T. 1985. 'Piaget, tools and the evolution of human intelligence'. World Archaeology 17: 32-43.
Latour, B. 1994. 'Pragmatogonies: A Mythical Account of How Humans and Nonhumans Swap Properties'. The American Behavioral Scientist 37: 791-808.
2 The pyramids at Giza - the megamachine and the function of management
The technology and systems that built the pyramids - management systems that equal contemporary systems in their complexity and division of labor.
Kemp, B.J. 1991. Ancient Egypt : anatomy of a civilization. London ; New York: Routledge.
Mumford, L. 1966. The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
3 An ancient Greek perfume jar - cutting edge design in the early state
The politics of production and consumption, and relations with technologies of manufacture.
Shanks, M. 1995. 'Art and an archaeology of embodiment: some aspects of archaic Greece'. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 5: 1–38.
Shanks, M. 1999. Art and the Early Greek State: an Interpretive Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4 A medieval castle - the nature of military function
Traditional technology and military engineering and the question of function. New perspectives on medieval castle design.
Johnson, M. 2002. Behind the castle gate : from medieval to Renaissance. London ; New York: Routledge.
5 A Wedgewood teapot c 1780 - industrial high-tech
Factory production, high-tech industrial design, the manufacture of taste. Art versus craft. The politics of industrial and craft production. Ornament.
Forty, A. 1992. Objects of desire : design and society since 1750. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson.
6 The electric light bulb - building technical networks
The intersection of lab research and social engineering, the embedded character of science and technology in heterogeneous webs, the expansion of these in the nineteenth century.
Hughes, T.P. 1983. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society 1880-1930. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hughes, T.P. 1985. 'Edison and electric light' in Mackenzie, D. and Wajcman, J. (eds.) The Social Shaping of Technology: How the Refridgerator Got Its Hum. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Hughes, T.P. 1987. 'The evolution of large technological systems' in Bijker, W.E., Hughes, T.P. and Pinch, T. (eds.) The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
7 The Computer Mouse - engineering relationships with things
Human computer interaction, human factors research, mechanical engineering and contemporary industrial design.
Interview with Jim Yurchenko (design team for the first Apple Mouse).
Norman, D.A. 1990. The design of everyday things. New York: Doubleday.
Norman, D.A. 2004. Emotional design : why we love (or hate) everyday things. New York: Basic Books.
8 The Sony Walkman - the technical invention of style
Innovation, style, identity and consumer technology.
DuGay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H. and Negus, K. 1997. Doing Cultural Studies: the Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage/Open University.
9 A supersonic aircraft - a case of serious science?
Why aircraft don't fly, but airlines and military organizations do. New techniques of computational design and their implications.
Interview with Ilan Kroo (Stanford Aero-Astro).
Law, J. 2002. Aircraft stories : decentering the object in technoscience. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
10 The BMW Mini - technology, design and the global corporation
Design - some summary comments
The assignment is to prepare a design portfolio on any artifact, contemporary or historical.
The objective is to unpack the working of the artifact, track it through conception, design and consumption, to make manifest the stories and scenarios held within the association of material, technology, use.
The "portfolio" may take any digital form - a dossier of discrete items, visual and/or textual, one or more narratives, an analytical model, or whatever is considered appropriate means of manifesting the connections between reason, technology and culture.
For some previous projects - Project topics - 2005 from 2005.
Assignment length will be decided according to the simple formula that one unit of credit represents approximately 1500 words of research essay.
Plan and initial proposal to be submitted digitally by February 15.
Final version to be submitted digitally by 4.00pm Friday March 24.
Design bibliography - expanded
