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Now showing 1 - 10 of 121
  • Publication
    Recollections of Heinz von Foerster, a Rhetorical Genius
    (2003-01-01) Krippendorff, Klaus
    On a cold day between Christmas and New Year 1961, in search of a place to study, I met Heinz in his office at the Biological Computer Laboratory. I knew of him through a network of designers who, like me, were interested in issues that conventional curricula did not address. Heinz greeted me, a total stranger, with the enthusiasm usually reserved for an old friend. To my surprise, he knew of the place where I had came from (the Ulm School of Design, an avant-garde institution now extinct but reproduced everywhere - much as cybernetics is now), and he suggested that I come to the University of Illinois to study with W. Ross Ashby. This short encounter enrolled me into cybernetics and defined my intellectual focus for years to come.
  • Publication
    Reliability in Content Analysis: Some Common Misconceptions and Recommendations
    (2004-07-01) Krippendorff, Klaus
    In a recent article published in this journal, Lombard, Snyder-Duch, and Bracken (2002) surveyed 200 content analyses for their reporting of reliability tests; compared the virtues and drawbacks of five popular reliability measures; and proposed guidelines and standards for their use. Their discussion revealed that numerous misconceptions circulate in the content analysis literature regarding how these measures behave and can aid or deceive content analysts in their effort to ensure the reliability of their data. This paper proposes three conditions for statistical measures to serve as indices of the reliability of data and examines the mathematical structure and the behavior of the five coefficients discussed by the authors, plus two others. It compares common beliefs about these coefficients with what they actually do and concludes with alternative recommendations for testing reliability in content analysis and similar data-making efforts.
  • Publication
    Models and Metaphors of Communication
    (1990-01-18) Krippendorff, Klaus
  • Publication
    Die Produkt-Semantik öffent die Türen
    (1984-03-01) Krippendorff, Klaus
  • Publication
    The Cybernetics of Design and the Design of Cybernetics
    (2007-10-01) Krippendorff, Klaus
    Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to connect two discourses, the discourse of cybernetics and that of design. Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes a comparative analysis of relevant definitions, concepts, and entailments in both discourse, and an integration of these into a cybernetically informed concept of human-centered design, on the one hand, and a design-informed concept of second-order cybernetics, on the other hand. In the course of this conceptual exploration, the distinction between science and design is explored with cybernetics located in the dialectic between the two. Technology-centered design is distinguished from human-centered design, and several axioms of the latter are stated and discussed. Findings – This paper consists of recommendations to think and do things differently. In particular, a generalization of interface is suggested as a replacement for the notion of products; a concept of meaning is developed to substitute for the meaninglessness of physical properties; a theory of stakeholder networks is discussed to replace the deceptive notion of THE user; and, above all, it is suggested that designers, in order to design something that affords use to others, engage in second-order understanding. Originality/value – The paper makes several radical suggestions that face likely rejection by traditionalists but acceptance by cyberneticians and designers attempting to make a contribution to contemporary information society.
  • Publication
    Afterword
    (2002-01-01) Krippendorff, Klaus
    Francisco J. Varela was a student and collaborator of Humberto R. Maturana. Their pioneering collaboration on Autopoiesis and Cognition reestablished “processes of living” as the principle topic of biological explorations. This topic had dropped out of the discourse of biology after the work of Jacob von Uexküll. Autopoiesis brought a new framework to biology. I say framework because it was not a theory that predicted observable phenomena but a scaffold to pose and answer new kinds questions. In their The Tree of Knowledge, which connected the notion of autopoiesis to a variety of biological, evolutionary, cognitive, and, in a rudimentary way, linguistic and social phenomena, Francisco started to identify his contributions.
  • Publication
    On Reflexivity in Human Communication
    (1989-03-16) Krippendorff, Klaus
  • Publication
    The Language of Objects
    (1989) Krippendorff, Klaus; Vakeva, Seppo
  • Publication
    Writing: Monologue, Dialogue, and Ecological Narrative
    (2005-01-01) Krippendorff, Klaus
    Writing mostly is a solitary activity. Right now, I sit in front of a computer screen. On my desk are piles of paper; notes for what I want to say; unfinished projects waiting to be attended to; books on shelves nearby to be consulted. I need to be alone when I write. Whether writing on a computer, on a typewriter or by hand, most writers I know prefer a secluded place without distractions from telephones and other people who demand attention. Writing requires a concentration that is absent in ordinary conversations. This affects how we communicate in writing. Writing flows differently from the way a conversation flows. It flows from word and from comments to comments on comments. Writing has a beginning, an end and headlines that introduce the whole and its parts. These are units of thought, not of interaction. Writing is composed of small building blocks. Composition is deliberate, more or less controlled, moving through a topic without loosing track of the overall purpose, the whole. We may go back to assure that our composition is coherent, eliminating redundancy, improving the wording and inserting thoughts that showed up later. When we have to write under non-solitary conditions, for example, in a newsroom with pressing deadlines, interrupting telephone calls, other reporters conversing in the neighboring cubical, an editor calling us with new assignments, the product is different. It reads more like an assembly of observational reports, a collage of images, lacking an overall structure. Textbooks on writing rarely speak of the conditions of writing but celebrate the qualities of its preferred product: style, grace, grammar, logical structure and coherence.
  • Publication