School for Designing a Society

Fall 2008 School for Designing a Society

in Urbana, IL... Semester lasts until December 12

SCHOOL MATERIALS

Readings
Paradigms: The Inertia of Language (.pdf) by Marianne Brün
This essay outlines some of the foundational concepts of our school, from one of its foundational thinkers.

Cybernetics of Cybernetics (500 page book - available in the School library, or you can purchase a copy for $50)
The Cybernetics of Cybernetics is both the name of an interdisciplinary, team-taught course offered for several semesters at UIUC in the 1970s, and the title of a book created by the students and instructors of that course. Both have explicitly and implicitly influenced the formation and development of the School for Designing a Society. The book includes canonical articles (including ones authored by the instructors) from the relatively brief history of the field, some responses to assignments by the students, a multi-vocal dictionary of cybernetic terms cross-referenced by author in "entailment meshes" diagramming each author's collection of definitions ... and other ways in which the composition of the book enacts the ideas presented in the book. This course will focus on reading the entire book together, with an eye toward the relevance to us thinking about designing society in 2008 of late-20th-century reflections on early-20th-century conundrums.

Instructors
Full Time: Susan Parenti, Rob Scott, Mark Enslin, Danielle Chynoweth, Michael Brun
Visiting: Patch Adams MD (October visit?)
Visiting: Almah Lavon Rice (Guest-in-Residence) Nov. 12-25, 2008
Visiting: Ryan Strandjord (Guest-in-Residence) Oct. 12-25, 2008
Visiting: Elizabeth Adams (Artist-in-Residence) Nov. 2-15, 2008
Visiting: Thomas Fischer (Artist-in-Residence) Nov. 2-15, 2008
Visiting: Larry Richards (Cybernetics Nug) Dec. 3-6, 2008

Ongoing Semester

Interested in getting involved mid-session? Contact us via this page: click here.

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