Our society is characterized by a large number of techno-scientific controversies which governments and individuals have to face on legislative, cultural and moral level. Issues such as reproductive health and climate change adaptation are only examples of the variety of controversies we have to deal with every day. For these themes there’s no monolithic truth, but multiple truths often conflicting between each other.
We can certainly find a relevant consensus on such issues, both scientific and popular, but it would be reductive not to consider also other discordant opinions, or to embrace a theory without observing its evolution process. For effective actions and self orientation within a complex issue, we can’t ignore individuals, organizational and power networks that nourish views and opinions which are sometimes distant or even in opposition. Each controversy needs to be observed and described following all the different points of view, in order to allow different interpretations of the problem and different decisions.
The controversial themes we are going to work with during the lab will be related to the two issues previously mentioned: reproductive health and climate change adaptation. Reproductive health is a relevant issue for governments, from a healthcare, social and economic point of view. At the same time it’s part of our private sphere: how can social and individual needs find an agreement? Climate change has been for a long time, and still is, a gigantic controversy, especially for its causes. The scientific community has agreed by now that climate is changing towards a specific direction. Which actions can be undertaken by governments and individuals to adapt to climate change? To what extent are we supposed to drive the adaptation of endangered species?
For both themes, the students will be supervised by domain experts, who will provide for specific data and information about the specific phenomenon. They will also examine and validate the artifacts produced in order to verify their ability to activate a discussion around the specific controversy. Both themes will be approached through some main dimensions, which even if not exhaustive will help to activate a “multidimensional knowledge” process that constitutes the foundation of each approach to complexity.
TOOLS
During the semester we will explore the controversies and their main aspects, we will give them a visual form and communicate them. To do this we will operate with communication design tools, an approach based on complexity principles and work both with structured and unstructured data sources.
This way we’ll experience a method that could hereinafter be applied to the observation of other complex phenomena.
OBJECTIVES
We have three objective, both scientific and didactic: observe first, understand, and allow others to see what we achieved. The ambition is to design visual tools for citizens and policy-makers to support a better, that is more conscious, decision making.
