10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17112
application/pdf
2038-3460
17112
2
en
Francesco Ronzon
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Donald A. Norman, Living with Complexity, MIT Press, 2011 and Matthias Gross, Ignorance and Surprise. Science, Society and Ecological Design, MIT Press, 2010
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
3
Book Reviews
2013-01-06
2023-06-05
2013-01-06
2023-07-14
194-198
TS
Francesco Ronzon
2012
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17112
194
Accademia di Belle Arti di Verona and Politecnico di Milano
2038-3460
2
en
198
Donald A. Norman, Living with Complexity, MIT Press, 2011 and Matthias Gross, Ignorance and Surprise. Science, Society and Ecological Design, MIT Press, 2010: Science, Design and Everyday Life
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17112/16046
3
194   BOOK REVIEWS




      concerned groups, procedural and          in order to understand what were the
      institutional arrangements.               conditions obstructing the strong
      What qualifies the advancement            concerned group in bringing a
      brought by the book is the intro-         dialogically democratic process into
      duction of the concept of measured        the controversy, that remains in the
      action, to which is dedicated the         domain of delegative processes.
      entire chapter 6. Such concept is
      rooted in the fact that “actors avail     Reference
      themselves of the means to be able at     Latour, B. (2004) Politics of nature: how to
      any moment to return to abandoned            bring the sciences into democracy,
      options, and that evaluations are            Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
      constantly revised in terms of new
      knowledge and points of view” (192)
      and it founds an empirical existence                         ***
      in what is known as the “precau-
      tionary principle” (ibidem), adopted
                                                Science, Design and Everyday Life
      as policy line in many EU contexts,
      and that applies to situation of
      uncertainty. This chapter is also the
      one that shows the weaknesses of the                 Donald A. Norman
      analysis carried out in the book. The
      whole chapter looks like the trial to            Living with Complexity
      convince the politicians (and the
      general public) to open up the space             2011, MIT Press, 298 pp.
      for hybrid forums, and dialogic
      democracy based on them, through                              and
      the undermining of opposing
      arguments, more than through an                        Matthias Gross
      empirically sounded discussion on
      under what conditions the hybrid           Ignorance and Surprise. Science,
      forums can be established. Shortly, it       Society and Ecological Design
      is more advocacy than analysis. This
      is why, going back to the High Speed             2010, MIT Press, 240 pp.
      Train between Turin and Lyon, the
      book has a low explanatory and
      interpretative power: the conceptual                Francesco Ronzon
      tools it provides are good at                 (Accademia di Belle Arti di Verona,
      describing the initial phase of the                 Politecnico di Milano)
      emergence of the concerned group
      opposing the train (like solving the      New technologies do not just consist
      uncertainties     related    to     the   of artifacts but perform as social
      effectiveness and the effects of the      design acts, so shaping and re-
      train itself) but they are insufficient   ordering people’s everyday life.
                                                         TECNOSCIENZA – 2 (2)        195




Current examples can be the Smart         arguments are then carried out. The
Phone diffusion, and in Italy the         first emphasizes the role of the
NO-TAV protests in Piemonte as            underlying structure, which when
well as the recent Referendum on          works out, reduces complexity or
nuclear plants.                           makes it marginal. The second
The two books reviewed here make          argument concerns design: how do
evident the multi-level analysis in       technological artifacts make their
play when inquiring the intertwining      underlying structure visible? .
of society, human beings and              Referring     to    fields   such     as
technology. The joint reading and         psychological       ecology      (James
comparison of the two texts allows us     Gibson), situated cognition (Jean
to take in consideration the two poles    Lave), distributed cognition (Edwin
of the debate: the micro-interactional    Hutchins), the book analyzes various
and the macro-political level.            notions     and     cases    of    daily
Donald Norman’s book is clearly on        technological objects. The recurrent
the ‘micro’ side of the analysis.         theme is the cognitive role performed
Following a successful approach           by social signifiers: the subtle signals
started with The Design of Everyday       offered by other people’ activities as
Things – translated in Italian with the   guides     for    individual     action.
awful title “La Caffettiera del           According to Norman, individuals’
Masochista” – the author focuses on       actions have always side effects. They
how interfaces of new technologies        leave traces behind so that others can
meet the users’ needs. The book is        go back to paths and activities which
pleasantly written as an exercise of      have been performed in the
sophisticated popularization. This        environment. Artificial Life biologists
makes it a smooth and interesting         and     theorists     label   such     a
reading, even if slightly erratic and     phenomenon as stigmergy: a type of
dispersive. The core of Norman’s          indirect coordination based on traces
argument is in the question he poses:     of past activities. The existence of
why is our technology so wrong-           these signals leads and constrains
footing? To answer it, the author         future activities, so producing
formulates another, more general,         complex structures through a self-
question: how do individuals cope         regulatory process which has no
with the world disorder from a            central orientation or planning. Such
cognitive viewpoint? The distinction      a digression allows the author to
between ‘complex’ and ‘complicated’       underline the conceptual difference
is introduced as a key to face with the   between signifier and affordance.
questions. ‘Complex’ is a state of the    Criticizing the use of the concept of
world, whereas ‘complicated’ is a         affordance by various designers,
state of the mind. To quote an ironic     Norman circumscribes it to the
motto from the book, ‘complicated is      practical and operational quality of a
something having a wrong-footing          material structure towards a specific
complexity’. Two further theoretical      user. Then Norman proposes the
196   BOOK REVIEWS




      notion of ‘signifier’ to indicate the      According to the author, the ideal,
      perceptible (visual, audible, tactile)     rational and omniscient user of
      dimension      which      makes      the   ergonomics is an abstraction which
      affordance visible. This notion is able    does not fit the limited rationality,
      to take into account the role of local     the scarcity of time and the situated
      practices and cultural traditions to       cultural routines of real users. As a
      interpret the traces in the user’s         consequence, interfaces should be
      perceptive landscape.                      able to embed in their task structure
      More than in Norman’s previous             the socio-cultural parameters of the
      work, the book reflections are not         historical, concrete user’s practices.
      only theoretical but also explicitly       Whereas Donald Norman’s book
      practical.    Beyond       his    socio-   focuses on the intimate sphere of the
      psychological research, Norman’s           relationship between the individual
      consultancy work is at the boundary        and technology, Matthias Gross
      between user-friendly technologies         moves his analysis towards society at
      and the human-centred approach to          large, with particular reference to
      technology design. Stating that            deliberative policies and strategies
      complexity is part of our world does       involved into scientific innovation.
      not justify designing wrong-footing        The book is concerned with the
      or misleading technologies. If a good      current       debate    on     reflexive
      technology design cannot handle            modernity (Beck, Giddens, Lasch).
      complexity by producing less               In particular, it focuses on the mana-
      complex things, as complexity is           gement of unexpected processes of
      necessary to certain activities, it can    technoscientific innovation, change
      still manage it in an effective way.       and invention. The leading idea is
      According to Norman the key to face        that “ignorance and surprise belong
      with complexity is twofold. First,         to each other”. Due to its nature,
      does the object have an internal logic     scientific methods should allow
      which can be implemented without           researchers to surprise themselves
      ambiguity to make it work? This            and their peers. However, this
      dimension goes back to solutions           produces an inevitable interruption
      such as structure adding (e.g.             of the continuum between accepted
      dividing a task in simpler modules)        knowledge and future expectations.
      or re-conceptualization (to substitute     In this sense, as summarized in the
      a task with a simpler or more precise      ‘expect the unexpected’ slogan, any
      one). Secondly, how does the real          novelty      includes    elements      of
      user experience set up the object          uncertainty and not- knowledge,
      structure? Here Norman’s usual             which cannot be foreseen. The
      critique to an ‘engineering’ approach      current explosion of knowledges and
      to new technologies emerges. The           technologies typical of the so called
      cases presented in the book highlight      contemporary knowledge society,
      how interface designers’ logics are        therefore, has the following corollary:
      blind to real people life practices.       new knowledge also means broader
                                                            TECNOSCIENZA – 2 (2)       197




ignorance. In this perspective,              means to postpone or delay action.
learning to handle surprise and              However, as Gross suggests, preca-
ignorance becomes constitutive of            ution concerns only what has not to
public decision making activities.           be done, rather than what has to be
The other key assumption of the              done.
book draws from the work of the              The first part of the book focuses on
sociologist Howard Becker and is             different types of knowledge gaps in
summarized as follows: “we don’t             science and everyday life, in the
have a conceptual language to discuss        attempt to offer a more open and
things we all know”. In this respect,        flexible approach to the issue.
the author puts forward a double             Departing from Georg Simmel’s
critique and a polemic remark.               nichtwissen (not- knowledge), the
Notwithstanding uncertainties chara-         author reflects on how unexpected
cterizing various scientific fields,         occurrences can be embedded in a
Gross underlines how the ideal of            scientific model able to include an
truth and certainty offered by               experimental       management        of
‘classic’ science is still well present in   ‘surprises’.
official rhetoric. To ensure lay             In the remainder of the book, Gross
people, emphasis on further research         develops his analysis of public
or known uncertainties would be              management of surprise looking at
functional to state that risks in play       the complex network of social
are under control. According to              interactions in the fields of landscape
Gross such an idea generates a               and ecological restoration. The
cascade of uncertainty. For example,         analysis of ecological design as a
uncertainties in seismologic sciences        social experiment outside the
are the bases for further uncertainties      laboratory breaks common assump-
concerning emissions. This makes             tions of certainty and predictability
eco-sensitive intervention more and          of science. In these fields the
more difficult to anticipate, in turn        deliberative challenge very often
generating uncertainties about how           stays in the fact that new knowledge
different social groups will react and       and intervention projects create new
so on.                                       options without providing new
The second polemic remark is                 criteria to manage them. In parti-
instead directed towards those               cular, the book analyzes empirically
authors (for example Myers, Raffen-          the management of the unexpected
sperger), supporting the ‘precaution         in two cases: an ecological inter-
principle’ thesis in all cases where         vention in an urban context and a
risks are scarcely known. Gross states       large scale landscape transformation
that in practice the precaution              in a post industrial area.
principle has been often evoked only         In the first case, Gross analyzes the
to prevent the government action in          story of the projects and inter-
contexts of scientific uncertainty.          ventions to transform the coast by
Namely, it has been interpreted as a         lake Michigan in Chicago from the
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      19th century until today. It emerges     modernity. In the contemporary
      that the appropriation of surprises      world human societies started to
      has been the tool to produce more        understand that not all the risks of
      robust and reliable strategies of        social action can be under control.
      environmental design. The second         Therefore, it would be necessary to
      case concerns interventions of           develop strategies able to reflexively
      revitalization of an abandoned area      embed and face with those risks in
      nearby Leipzig, previously used for      development and planning policies.
      coal extraction in the socialist         In the end, according to Gross,
      Eastern Germany. In this case early      everyday life in the technoscience age
      success induced an increasing            is an inevitable, continuous and
      fragility of the intervention because    deliberate hazard.
      of the minor attention given to the
      surprises emerging from the project.
      The comparison between Chicago
      and Leipzig – as Gross states – is
      interesting for various reasons. Both
      the regions have been involved into
      public interventions of ecological
      requalification based on State
      funding. In both cases landscapes
      have been restored without any
      historical reference and interventions
      have produced a boundary work: a
      multi-voiced process of definition of
      social boundaries which distinguishes
      science from non science, as part of a
      rhetorical practice to gain epistemic
      authority and legitimation towards
      rival instances.
      The whole frame points out that
      technoscientific interventions cannot
      be characterized as either a linear
      and top down activity, or a trial and
      error process of variations and
      selections.     Rather,    they    are
      coordinated management processes
      of unexpected turns, able to take into
      account less or more rapid changes.
      For the author the political morale of
      the     issues   inquired     concerns
      knowledge production in what Beck
      and others have named as second
