January 26th, 2009
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For one year, the employees of Expedition will be dedicating their Monday’s to thinking. Thinking about thinking, thinking about what we do, thinking about how we do it, and why. Think Up, the impetus behind this year of Mondays, is an educational company formed within the auspices of the Useful Simple Trust. The remit is large, but so is the ambition: to use the opportunity that the economic downturn has presented us with to think up a new raison d’etre, and modus operandi as engineers, and to train ourselves into shape.
 A number of metaphors were cued up to launch our first session. The idea was invoked of a group of structural engineers a drift in a life boat on todays tumultuous seas of change. If we are those passengers, what should we do. In which direction should we head. How must we hold together and trust each other? How do we sustain ourselves before having to resort to cannibalism? (every metaphor has its limits!).
 Another metaphor discussed was that of a journey to Edinburgh. Told which way to go, what would one pack? More tricky now: what would be packed if the directions had not been supplied? And most testing of all: what would we pack for a journey for which the destination and the direction were unknown?
 On this first day of ‘thinking up’, many more ideas, questions and metaphors were brought into the round to give us food for thought:-
 200 years after the birth of Charles Darwin, what sort of evolution should we expect for ourselves? If evolution has been an unconscious adaptation to change, maybe we can expect our evolution to be a conscious reaction to change. If the structural engineer is an endangered species, how can structural engineers consciously react and adapt to that change?
 Pink Floyd’s David Gilmore is arguably at the peak of his guitar playing skills. What does it take to be the best? Ten thousand hours of practice was the response quoted from a Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliners. What ever we do, we want to be the best.
 We should be passionate about what we do, but is it possible to generate passion?
 It is all very well being excellent, but we must also be relevant; and relevance must come first. With reference to the design diagram, relevance is directly related to need, which is the first thing addressed in design.
 What is the need that we should be addressing. Reference was made to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In our work to date, we have been focusing on an elevated need - self esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others and by others. With today’s prediction of changing climate, will the needs that we address in the future be further down the hierarchy - water, food, homeostasis?
 Following food for thought, food for eating - so good that there were no leftovers.
 During the afternoon session, we followed up on this question of need with two documentaries:
 Jennifer Baichwal’s “Manufactured Landscapes” which unambiguously identifies the need to change our consumer lifestyles.
 Jacob Bronowski’s “Ascent of Man” - only ten minutes of the final episode, mind - in which Bronowski commentates that we must look back, and see where we have come before we can take a brave step forward into the unknown.
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Entry Filed under: Ideas exchange, Think Up
2 COMMENTS Add your own
1. Expedition’s blog &&hellip | March 11th, 2009 at 10:02 am
[…] The day started with a discussion of two quite different approaches to understanding our experiences. The first approach is to seek a rationale for experience on the basis of a series of empirical observations and deductions. By contrast, the second approach is to be more accepting of our experiences and their mystery. For example, we may observe that we make any number of decisions in a day, and then set to wondering how we make those decisions. Using the first approach, we might draw the conclusion, based on some sort of scientific research, that we have evolved to make decisions on the basis of three criteria: harm avoidance, seeking reward and novelty. Proponents of the second approach would accept more readily that we do make any number of choices in a day, without the need to know why. They would accept that the methods by which we make decisions are either unknown or not so easy to simplify, and would be comfortable with, and would even value, this mystery. This second approach falls within the realms of Keats‘ theory of Negative Capability: a theory which says that not everything can be resolved; a state of intentional open-mindedness. During this early stage in the evolution of Think Up Mondays, in which we are making observations about our surroundings, this discussion reminds us to put on the breaks before we charge down the route of understanding by determinism. From the value of mystery, we moved on to discuss the value of experience. We can truly learn a great deal from one another if we take the time to listen to each other’s stories. Stories provide an immensely rich seam of knowledge and emotions from which we can take as little or as much as we choose. The storyteller also has the choice to give as little or as much as possible in the storytelling. We all carry a portfolio of stories; experiences that influence our choices. These stories could be construed as some of the contents of the metaphorical backpack (proposed in week one) that we take forward with us. As a group then, we could make a great deal of progress by telling stories, and listening, in order to learn from each other’s experiences. […]
2. Expedition’s blog &&hellip | March 11th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
[…] My previous blog posts about Think Up Mondays (1 and 2) have been very passive: ‘we were told that’, ‘it was shown that’. I think that the decision to write in this manner was in part due to a lack of confidence with my understanding of the whole endeavor. Having talked this matter over with my colleagues, not only do I now feel that that sense of uncertainty is to be expected, I also feel more comfortable with the sense of mystery that surrounds Think Up Mondays, and so more confident to write about it (perhaps I have taken Think Up Monday Number 2’s material about negative capability to heart).  […]
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