Born Shouting

To paraphrase Sly, who infamously never said ‘Don’t push me‘ in First Blood (he said ‘Don’t push it‘ in various ways)…

Don’t count me!

As a person in a generation that has so many numbers surrounding and defining us(NHS number, National Insurance number, bank account number, annual income amount, number of shares this and that bank …) I fear that those numbers begin to become me.

I feel I need to heed the warnings of those who came before…(here comes Tamkin again…)

The money. They make a killing by fantasy. Now, counting any number is always a sadistic activity. Like Hitting. In the bible, the Jews wouldn’t allow you to count them. They knew it was sadistic.

Dr Tamkin in ‘Seize the Day (Penguin Modern Classics)‘ by Saul Bellow.

“You are Number Six.”
“I am not a number — I am a free man!”

The Prisoner

Just heard the following quote on the Antiques Roadshow and have to say it strikes a chord…

Not What I Have But What I Do Is My Kingdom

The words were engraved on a box made by an old ladies’ mother in the early 1900’s with some connection to the suffragette movement. Wonderful…

I think that the concept of automation taking over routine tasks to the degree envisioned by Papanek in this piece is still a utopian dream (those children stitching footballs in Asia are still a long way from becoming designers) but the description of design as meaningful and crucial is one I wholly agree with.

I’ve hopefully tidied up some of Papanek’s tangled wording at the start of this quotation.

In a world in which [...] work [will] increasingly [...] be done through automation and in which most routine supervision, quality control, and computation are performed by word and data processors, the work of the design team (research, social planning, creative innovation) is one of the few meaningful and crucial activities left to man. Inescapably, designers will be needed to help set goals for all of society.

Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, Victor Papanek

I can’ help thinking that Geraldus Cambrensis was after something when he wrote about the Welsh in such glowing terms:

These people being of a sharp and acute intellect, and gifted with
a rich and powerful understanding, excel in whatever studies they
pursue, and are more quick and cunning than the other inhabitants
of a western clime.

The Description Of Wales by Geraldus Cambrensis or download from Project Gutenberg

It doesn’t jump out at you, but Born Shouting is a blog that has been born and bred in Wales. Wales is a country that is little known, often misunderstood and sometimes confused with other places. I love the description written by Geraldus Cambrensis in 1191 - short and concise yet a powerful depiction of Wales’ geography and ancient inhabitants.

It is a country very strongly defended by high mountains, deep valleys, extensive woods, rivers,
and marshes; insomuch that from the time the Saxons took possession of the island the remnants of the Britons, retiring into these regions, could never be entirely subdued either by the English or by the Normans.

The Description Of Wales by Geraldus Cambrensis or download from Project Gutenberg

Going through some old notes from a systems thinking course a did a few years ago I came across the following text, that gave me pause to think about the organisation I work for how it organises itself.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m too young (just about) to remember the Kennedy clan or for them to have influenced me greatly when growing up - but inspirational words such as these make me want to learn more about them.

Some men see things as they are and say, why?
I dream of things that never were and say, why not?

Robert F Kennedy