What Does Hannah have to Offer Design?
Something is going on in Hannah Arendt's Reflective Judgments for Design. There is also much going on in her thinking related to various extreme political situations right now, and the US has turned towards Donald Trump and authoritarianism, as the rest of the world appears to be heading.
US election Day
It's difficult to believe that Donald Trump may become president of the United States once again. That he has been able to influence 49% of the polling population to endorse him and to say they will vote for him is historic. As someone once said., his criminal record would bar him from working at McDonald's, which he pretended to do in a photo op a couple of weeks ago, in response to hearing that, Harris had worked there when she was younger.
Whatever the outcome of this election, Trump and his campaign's ability to spin any version of reality, divorced from evidence and fact, while overriding the Constitution and people's fundamental rights in flagrant ways with impunity, indicates a type of nihilism that perhaps Nietzsche and others had suspected was going on in the late 1800s.
Design and Reflective Judgments
Design and Reflective Judgment are central concepts in an argument about the importance of diverse dialogue and perspectives in the shaping technological design (means and ends). But what is that argument, and what is its validity? Why not let a few individuals make the important decisions, such as the experts who can build the technology, or others experts with the vantages points and authority to discern the goals and ends, such as business managers with their typical focus on profitability and efficiency deemed necessary to ensure organizational survival in the marketplace?