returning

The past comes back to haunt in all sorts of ways. This is a key feature of the archaeological imagination. It may be something like “this happened here”, or “this was the way it was, and still is”. And, as archaeologists, as all of us do – we return, revisit, rehearse, reiterate, repeat. This familiar…

foresight and innovation – the automobile

Foresight and Innovation returns to Stanford With Stanford colleagues Bill Cockayne and Tamara Carleton, I have started to revive our research interest in Foresight and Innovation, anticipating, plotting future scenarios, as a part of the Center for Design Research. Bill pioneered this effort when we worked together in Stanford Humanities Lab with Jeffrey Schnapp and…

Ruth Tringham, performance and creative confidence

Over twenty years ago I was in Paris as a Fellow of the Maison des sciences de l’homme at the Centre d’archéologie classique and the Centre Louis Gernet (Alain Schnapp, François Lissarague and colleagues), combining the connoisseurship of ancient Corinthian ceramics with my discovery of French anthropology of science and technology (Bruno Latour, Pierre Lemonnier,…

Tom Matano on timeless design

Our Revs Program class on judging the historical significance of artifacts – cars – is in flow [Link] This afternoon we were joined by Tom Matano – designer of the Mazda Miata and the RX 7 – two timeless classics. And this was his subject – what makes design “timeless”? For Tom it comes down…

Is ‘Design Thinking’ the New Liberal Arts?

Peter Miller’s piece about design thinking and history, more accurately archaeology (because archaeology deals with the past-in-the-present), is in the latest edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Is ‘Design Thinking’ the New Liberal Arts?. Here are some highlights that convey a key message – that human centered design and design thinking, about which I…

heritage – new definitions

This is one of a series of comments on the 8th biennial symposium “Connoisseurship and the Collectible Car” held at the Revs Institute for Automotive Research in Naples, Florida in March 2015. [Link] Cars are changing – robots are arriving. The car collector is becoming curator [Link] Car collecting is evolving from hobby to heritage…