This
icon refers to sites that are in some way aligned with the design approach
of EDF. We view design as a fundamental activity that can realise major
changes in the ways we live and work, rather than a series of professions
that we 'do'. We believe that a more sustainable world can only be arrived
at through the design of sustainments - practical, incremental design
responses with the ability to sustain. This approach necessitates careful,
relational thinking which tends to refuse feel-good assertions and the
concealment of problems. Allied sites effectively push against the tide
of uncritical commercialism that characterises the web.
Reading
critically means reading questioningly. This icon refers to sites that
are substantial in some way, but should not be taken at face value. It
might be that the site provides information from which more relational
implications need to be drawn. An example here would be a site that details
biophysical changes without connecting these changes to their causes or
consequences. Or, it might even be that useful information is buried under
commercial sales pitches and the value of the site is directly contrary
to its intention. For instance, a site detailing the convenience features
of a technological product may provide a useful case-study of the energy
intensive trends in front-end electronic design.
This
icon indicates content. This may be in the form of essays, articles or
case-studies which could be useful to you. Be careful: because information
arrives so easily via the web and it is such a commercial domain, content
can take on the appearance of free product. In our experience particularly
in teaching, we have found that this promotes rampant plagiarism. Resist
this by referencing anything you use and demanding that others do so too!
This maintains the value of material that is not directly commercial,
and will also hopefully contribute to the slowing of the disappearance
of this form of content on the web.
This
icon indicates a site with a potentially useful set of links. In our key
however, references are not resources. Calling uncritically listed links
'resources' replays the uncriticality of the web in general. It
also promotes one of its worst immaterial designs: the idea that information
is knowledge. While lists of links can be useful, they can also have you
jumping from site to site wasting valuable research time, often without
realising it. That is why we have attempted to break this trend by reviewing
links. Having said this, not all the sites given this icon have had their
links comprehensively reviewed - you still haven't found what you're looking
for!
This
icon refers to sites that focus on science or use scientific methodology.
While the biophysical sciences clearly have a contribution to make to
understanding environmental changes and scientific research often stands
the greatest chance of having an influence on decision-makers, science
tends not to think about the social and cultural ecologies that come before
and after its objects. The result is that environmental problems, like
for example 'the greenhouse effect' appear to be 'natural'
events, happening 'out there' rather than being fundamentally
connected to human activity. There is also a growing myopia which seems
to be related to the spread of scientific methodology into many other
domains. The tendency to seek 'truth' in details, to measure,
to break things down into parts and extrapolate truths from these reductions,
makes it very difficult to consider things relationally - as they change
across time and in different situations. It also obscures how your perspective
on things becomes partly reflected in those things. A classic example
here is various environmental departments within government that do not
communicate with each other because they believe they are dealing with
the same thing and not their own environment-productions.
This
icon references sites that privilege 'development', as in 'ESD'
(ecologically sustainable development).'ESD' was a term that arose
from the United Nations community in the late '80s. 'ESD' attempted to
fit the idea of ecological sustainability into the idea of development
based on the restricted monetary economy. Mostly, this hasn't achieved
what it meant to achieve because sustainability doesn't work as a sub-category
of development. While economic development continues as the unquestioned
and unchecked dominant force in the world today, things will continue
to get worse. EcoDesign have been working with an inversion of 'ESD'
- 'DES': developing ecological sustainments. This shifts the key
(and driving) value from development to sustainment. (see Tony Fry, Remakings:
Ecology Design Philosophy Sydney: Envirobook 1994).
We
do have a perhaps too harsh critique of 'greenies' which, it must be said,
is partly about distinguishing our sustainment design project from the
focus of most of the green movement. Having said that, we feel that our
critique is valid, and would like to hear your thoughts on this. We feel
that those who want to 'save the environment' mostly conceive
environmental problems in way-too-narrowly biophysical terms. In focussing
only on wilderness or heritage-listed places, there is an implicit suggestion
that it is only these kinds of environments that are worth saving because
they are supposedly free from the destructive, un-lovely touch of the
modern, man-made world. But the ideal of pristine, 'un-touched'
environment that appears in tourist pamphlets and posters is just that
- an ideal. Dating from the time of the industrial revolution, there is
nowhere that is not touched by human influence, be it the air, land or
sea. This desire and preoccupation with saving beautiful places also conceals
the need to sustain the everyday environments we have made, depend upon
and continually change by our habits, work practices, holidays, products
etc. In focussing on the visible effects of environmental impacts, the
relations between 'natural', social and cultural ecologies that
are generating them are concealed or even erased.
This
site is utopian either because it believes things will change for the
better if 'we' simply unify people/ practices/ideas (think the
United Nations) or it uses hyper-positive rhetoric because it believes
that "people don't want to hear bad news stories" (as in
most government sites!). Our take on the first is that few people really
know how to work together in difference effectively (check Kyoto's long
haul to nowhere), and on the second, that giving people what they want
is a big part of the problem. Further, saying that 'things are getting
better' simply suggests that enough, and the right kinds of things
are being done while they are not. This icon also refers to sites that
have become fixated on a 'solution' and therefore tend to reify
it and circle around it in their work.
This
site is negatively simplistic. It conceals the complexity of the environmental
problems it deals with without qualifying or explaining its reductions.
Gradually, what is concealed gets forgotten and becomes erased. One result
of this is that it promotes simple 'how-to' solutions to complex problems.
Another more general result is that terms like 'environment', 'world',
'society' or 'culture' get thrown around as though they
were absolute, common realities/experiences.
This
site is about projecting an image and not much else. While much on the
web sacrifices content to styling in the assumption that the image inherently
embodies and communicates meaning, this icon refers to sites that do not
seem to be about image at all, and yet unthinkingly conform to the web's
image economy. The sites of some environmentalists exemplify this.
Read
this site sceptically - it is trying to sell you something potentially
dangerous. The most common example of this is when commercial interest
is (thinly) disguised by what seems to be humanitarian good will. This
might be in the form of a push to 'improve the standard of living' in
a so-called 'third world' countries by promoting the need for access to
the internet (which is as much access to western consumerism as it is
to information).