Electricity and the Hybrid Imagination - Mixing Technology and Culture

1. Electricity and the Hybrid Imagination - Mixing Technology and Culture Andrew Jamison Aalborg University

2. Based on: PROCEED (a Program of Research on Challenges and Opprtunities in Engineering Education in Denmark)

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Hybrid Imagining, or Change-Oriented 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

8. Hybrid Imaginations in the Renaissance • Artists and engineers in combination • Connecting magic to humanist movement • Leading to the scientific revolution • and the experimental method

9. For example: Leonardo da Vinci, the artist-engineer

10. Hybrid Imaginations in Industrialization • Scholars and craftsmen in combination • Connecting science and romanticism • Creating engineering sciences • And engineering universities

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. A major influence on:… • Interior and industrial design • Architecture: Wright, Gehry, Utzon • Urban and regional planning • Socialist politics and culture • The ”education of desire”

15. ”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.” ” From ”Useful Work versus Useless Toil”:

16. 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

17. Hybrid Imaginations in Modernization • (re)combining artistic expression andengineering • focusing on the human and cultural dimensions of technology • creating professional schools and colleges for design • and bringing humanities into engineering education

18. A Hybrid Imagination: The Bauhaus (1919-1933) "art and technology – a new unity”

19. 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

20. 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.”

21. 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”

22. Hybrid Imaginations: Computer Liberation 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” Stewart Brand, creator of Whole Earth Catalog Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib (1974)

23. 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

24. ”Appropriate technology” in the 1970s The New Alchemy Institute Ark Nordic Folkcenter for Renewable Energy

25. 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

26. For example: Fritjof Capra • physicist-turned-environmentalist • author of many popular books • founder of Center for Ecoliteracy

27. “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.”

28. 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.

29. 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.

30. Professor Steven Moore Moving into the second alley flat...

31. 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/

32. Appropriating reality