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I've been reflecting on the distinction between 'academic' and 'professional', esp. in contexts where the former can be used as an insult. These terms can be used to imply an opposition between theory & practice, words & actions, useless & useful. But that's not right at all.
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At their best, academic practices have an intimate relationship with reality and a deep-seated accountability for how they represent it in something aiming toward truth. The opposite of academic is not professional but dogmatic, fundamentalist, conjectural, manipulative, etc.
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In that sense, excellent professional practices also have 'academic' qualities. They are accountable for how they generate knowledge and for which ends they leverage it. Reflective practice is not reproducing dogma, but skilfully engaging with and serving a changing world.
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But in professional practices aimed at the future, predicting and/or trying to design it, 'academic' sensibilities might seem to have less to offer. The assumed openness of the future can be used as a rationale for giving free rein to imaginative possibilities.
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Artistic imagination tethered to a handful of dubiously confident predictions about the future and fuelled by naive assumptions about the ability of design(ers) to bring about social change through technological development can lead to dizzying results.
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'Academic' objections to unfounded claims, inconsistent logic, and so on in relation to shining visions of preferable (but for whom?!) futures might seem stodgy, pedantic, conservative. Don't creatives need to have freedom to dream, to at least try to make a better world?
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These are issues of world building. I think one of the main problems with attempts at designing for the future by those who don't respect or engage with rigorous attempts at understanding the past and present is that the logic behind their visions of the future is rubbish.
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Alternative world building CAN be done well though. Some of the best world building in fiction is great because of the very careful attention to detail and the *logic* of following certain conditions to plausible consequences (Ursula Le Guin, Umberto Eco..)
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Of course excellent world building in design is also possible ( @superflux are masters here), but it is not what designers are typically trained or equipped for—only what they often end up attempting (and possibly being rewarded for if seen as 'visionary' or 'ambitious').
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So what kind of responsible practices do we need in design that can aim for ambitious visions of preferable futures, but *also* with respect for historicity, complex socio-technical/economic/cultural dynamics, and mechanisms of social change?
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What kind of #designeducation would be needed to train future designers for responsible world-building design practices? What would they need to be good at? What would they need to know they are *not* good at, and about how to act accordingly?
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These are big questions without easy answers. But as a start: To develop knowledge-producing, sense-making, and world-building practices that are adequate to the challenges our current worlds face, we need to recognize that academics and professionals are on the same side.
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