The two faces of innovation

Following the Nature article discussed previously, this is a 2010 paper looking into innovation in the US based on patent data (1970-2005). It already depicts that invention (used here interchangeably with innovation) exhibits diminishing returns. An interesting distinction is made between two different approaches to innovation.

One understanding of innovation is that it is driven by incentives and the supply of knowledge capital producing either constant or increasing returns. This view is connected to economy and markets and therefore innovators are expected to provide solutions corresponding to price signals. In this paradigm, “private efforts at knowledge making increase the overall stock.”

Second (contrary and also what the authors ultimately believe) understanding is that innovation is “subject to the evolutionary dynamics of all living systems” and thus not constant. It is not only reliant on incentives and knowledge capital but also on constraints and it grows increasingly complex and costly and reaches diminishing returns; higher expenditures produce fewer innovations. Whereas early research plucks the lowest fruit and that specialized questions require more time and money to resolve, and more preparation.

The authors claim that “the stories that we tell about our future assume that innovation will allow us to continue our way of life in the face of climate change, resource depletion and other major problems.” However, solar power and wind energy investments are found to be producing fewer returns; innovation in these fields is shrinking. So do all research challenges where pioneering research has already depleted the broadly applicable questions and research is now required to more specialized fields. Were we to continue to produce innovation in one field, then we would have to allocate more resources to this field and fewer resources to others.

References

Strumsky, D., Lobo, J. & Tainter J.A. (2010). Complexity and the Productivity f Innovation. In Systems Research and Behavioral Science Syst. Res. 27, 496-509. DOI:10.1002/sres.1057

(photo taken at the recent Rotterdam biennale)

The decline of disruptiveness

Authors of “Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time,” recently published on Nature, argue that disruptiveness in papers and patents is declining as well as word diversity and combinatorial novelty. At the same time, declining disruptiveness does not preclude individual disruptive works. A substantive shift is undergoing in science and technology, they argue, that might appear as the slowing of innovative activity. Authors attribute their findings to a reliance on a narrower set of existing knowledge; this benefits individual careers but not scientific progress. Scholars, say the authors, may be encouraged to read widely and be given time to get familiar with the ever growing knowledge frontier.

Reading the paper I also thought disruptiveness is undermined by narrowing down slices of knowledge and yes I also think this is product of pursuing research for the sake of individual career paths. There are many more of course, like the radical increase of PhD research produced and published (and through that, the promotion of individuality in doing research), higher competition between institutions, lack of time for keeping up with all that is being simultaneously developed, you name it. I do think however that technological innovation in particular, often suffers from lack of relevance probably because it has been the case that people attributed more value on the power of technology itself rather than what drives it. The effects of Modernism and the siloing of knowledge production is now becoming increasingly more apparent causing, what the authors call, the discrepancy between the availability of knowledge and its use. Which is probably where we stand at the moment: too far ahead in the specific and too weak in making it relevant for others.

That said, it is no wonder that the wow effect of the very specific technology produced does little good to us in the midst of the overall crises we live in. The magnitude of our problems together with our incapacity to produce credible answers for them shows that maybe technology alone cannot be the answer for everything. And maybe that is why innovation is ceasing or slowing down: we are at crossroads; we are at that awkward moment in time that we’ve lost sight of the others. So, how do we move forward? The paper’s authors ask for broader research and more time. They also oddly claim that the philosophy of science believes in the potential of knowledge accumulated. Maybe so, but then again very Popper-proper. Maybe it is Kuhn’s change of paradigm what we are really, really, desperately in need of. Maybe then the new disruptive will be what makes sense for the many.

Resilience

Resilience’ is defined as the ability of a system to absorb disturbances before unpredictably changing its structure from one equilibrium state to another, less desirable one.

Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience

Intimately connected with the notion of resilience is the idea of ‘adaptive management’, founded on the explicit belief that ‘organizations and institutions can ‘‘learn’’ as individuals do’. The first major international conference on resilience, was hosted in April 2008 by the Stockholm Resilience Centre (recipient of the largest single research grant ever awarded environmental research in Sweden). It chose to illustrate its commitment to dialogue between science and the humanities by encouraging the participants to view an art exhibit.

Image available here

The man who flooded us with ideas

What a beautiful farewell text for someone whose ideas will stay with us for long. Martin Guinard mentions;

  • the notion that nothing is, by itself, either reducible or irreducible to anything else
  • the distinct tonality of the scientific and political/ legal modes of existence; also between three different types of aesthetics: scientific, artistic, and political [Scientific aesthetics, thanks to its instruments, allows knowledge of problems such as climate change to emerge. The artistic aesthetic allows the metabolizing of affects. Finally, political aesthetics allow us to gather and mobilize various stakeholders]
  • thinking in networks
  • the pinning of the Moderns dissociation between the territory where they live (common living spaces) and the territories they depend upon in order to live (notably the places from which they extract resources)
  • the marking of the end of the Great Divide between nature and culture, society and the individual, subjects and objects, facts and values

Read full text by Martin Guinard here | Photo available here

The role of capitalism and the state in conceptualizing future life scenarios

Conceptualizing future scenarios largely depends on people’s perspective on capitalism and the role of the state: one section sees no relation to the state as is now and the corporate structures that influence politics and policies. [anarchist thinkers like Bookchin and eco-socialists]. The other looks into the economics of the commons or the planetary boundaries and therefore rely on the state to provide with structures to support green investments and regulations related to decreasing carbon emissions and welfare provision. Great read.

Futures | Architecture after Architecture: Spatial Practice in the Face of the Climate Emergency

Envisioning Free Space @De School

Had a lovely Saturday late afternoon talk envisioning Amsterdam 2050 as a city where cultural free spaces are recognized as microcosms of our wider community and vital laboratories for social-ecological innovation. Big thanks to fellow panelists and to Ricardo Silva for moderating this discussion on the importance of transforming cultural heritage into spaces of adaptation.

https://envisioningfree.space/

2022 Media Architecture Award

I have had the honor and the pleasure of chairing this years Media Architecture Awards together with Levente Szabó, Matteo Costanzo and Edwin Heathcote. Together we viewed 76 buildings, 59 plans and 29 smaller scale projects and selected the 5 nominees for all three categories. Prizes were awarded to winners last Saturday. The ceremony was held in (the packed) Urania National Film Theatre.
Congratulations and a big applause to all nominees and winners and to the organizers of this amazing event:
Janos Pasztor, Hulesh Mate & Levente Borenich

Check winners here: https://epiteszforum.hu/a-vancza-muvek-epulete-es-ratgeber-laszlo-terve-nyerte-az-idei-media-epiteszeti-dijat

Architectural Education in Times of Uncertainty’ Symposium, 2-4/11, BK, Berlage Rooms

Want to talk with us on the current challenges of architecture and how these are affecting architectural education? Join us from 2-4 November, live here in Delft for the ‘Architectural Education in Times of Uncertainty’ Symposium. The event unfolds over three days with discussions on the integration of circularity in current curricula, new types of collaboration, transitions in pedagogy and learning in extreme complexity with an amazing line up. For more information and registrations please visit our website.

New publication!

I couldn’t be prouder of my dear friend Markus Berger who -together with his colleague Kate Irvin – has compiled this amazing book I am holding in my hands right now. I am most grateful for having been entrusted to contribute with a chapter on repair and architecture. I had so much fun studying for it and writing it and I am delighted my piece found its place in this volume amongst so many interesting contributions.
Learn more about this book here

#circularity #circularbuiltenvironment #circulareconomy #repair #architecture #circulardesign

New platforms on circularity launched!

Here are the links to two new online platforms we launched recently. The first one is called ‘Circularity for Educators’ and contains a series of different types of resources that can support teaching based on the way we have currently framed this in our education. The second, is called ‘Educators for Circularity’ and is complementary to the first one. It provides with an opportunity to connect to colleagues, exchange views on topics related to circularity and/or share insights from teaching. It is also meant as tools for creating new opportunities for collaboration within a wider community of people (academics or not) who are in one way or another involved in circular ventures.

Click here for ‘Circularity for Educators’

https://www.tudelft.nl/…/educ…/circularity-for-educators

Click here for ‘Educators for Circularity’

New publication

Look what came with the mail! Horizon2020 program SoPHIA research has been successfully concluded and the results are finally published in a special edition of “Economia della Cultura.” I am very proud of being a member in this consortium and for having contributed to this amazing endeavor.
Big thanks to my Greek colleagues and our European partners for this meaningful collaboration.

You want to read the report? Publication open access and you can download it from this page

You want to know more about SoPHIA? Then click here

#UniversitadeglistudiROMATre #NationalTechnicalUniversityofAthen #InterartsFoundation #EuropeanMuseumAcademy #DunLaoghaireInstituteofArtDesignandTechnology #EDUCULT #IRMO #SOPHIA #Horizon2020 #socialplatform #holistic #heritage #ImpactAssessment

Notes from “Meeting the Universe Halfway”

Phenomena: the primary ontological unit as in the differential patters of mattering; the ontological inseparability, or entanglement of intra-acting agencies; they are not produced in a lab and engineered by humans but through complex agential intra-actions of multiple material-discursive practices or apparatuses of bodily production.

Reality: it is composed not of things-in-themselves or things-behind-phenomena but of things-in-phenomena.

Intra-actions instead of interactions: relata do not preexist but emerge through specific intra-actions. Agential intra-actions are specific causal material enactments that may or may not involve “humans.”

Posthumanism: it marks the practice of accounting for the boundary-making practices by which the “human” and its others are differentially delineated and defined; it refuses the idea of a natural division between nature and culture.

Matter: it is neither fixed and given nor the mere end result of different processes. Matter is produced and productive, generated and generative. Matter is agentive, not a fixed essence or property of things. Mattering is differentiating, and which differences come to matter, matter in the iterative production of different differences. The world is an open process of mattering through which mattering itself acquires meaning and form through the realization of different agential possibilities. The universe is agential intra-activity in its becoming; Matter is always already an ongoing historicity; it is substance in its intra-active becoming-not a thing but a doing, a congealing of agency. Matter is a stabilizing and destabilizing process of iterative intra-activity; matter comes to matter through the iterative intra-activity of the world in its becoming.

Apparatuses: they are specific material reconfigurings of the world that do not merely emerge in time but iteratively reconfigure space-time-matter as part of the ongoing dynamism of becoming; they are not passive observing instruments; on the contrary, they are productive of (and part of) phenomena; they are discursive practices.

Discursive practices: Discourse is not what is said ; it is that which constrains and enables what can be said; they define what counts as meaningful statements; they are specific material reconfigurings through which “objects” and “subjects” are produced; they are specific material (re)configurings of the world through which the determination of boundaries, properties, and meanings is differentially enacted.

Agential Realist Ontology: it refuses representationalism in favor of a relationality between specific material (re)configurations of the world through which boundaries, properties and meanings are differentially enacted and (form?) specific material phenomena.

Knowing: is a matter of intra-acting; it entails specific practices through which the world is differentially articulated and accounted for; it entails differential responsiveness and accountability as part of a network of performances; it is not a bounded or closed practice but an ongoing performance of the world.

Εthics: it is not simply about responsible actions in relation to human experiences of the world; rather, it is a question of material entanglements and how each intra-action matters in the reconfiguring of these entanglements, that is, it is a matter of the ethical call that is embodied in the very worlding of the world.

Humans: to the extent that concepts, laboratory manipulations, observational interventions, and other human practices have a role to play, it is as part of the larger material configuration of the world. That is, the phenomena produced are not the consequences of human will or intentionality or the effects of the operations of Culture, Language, or Power. Humans do not merely assemble different apparatuses for satisfying particular knowledge projects; they themselves are part of the ongoing reconfiguring of the world (…) That is, human bodies, like all other bodies, are not entities with inherent boundaries and properties but phenomena that acquire specific boundaries and properties through the open-ended dynamics of intra-activity. Humans are part of the world-body space in its dynamic structuration.

Objectivity: (In Bohr’s account), objectivity is a matter of the unambiguous communication of the results of reproducible experiments, hereby replaced by agential separability-an agentially enacted ontological separability within the phenomenon.

References

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham; London: Duke University Press.