Hi Scott. I also remember benign neglect from the 60s. “Intention management” is new to me but I have read about design features of fast food restaurants that are supposed to move people out quickly. This is interesting from an educational standpoint since it suggests that design can also impact engagement, interest and persistence. One of the Arab world’s cultural foibles is a prohibition on ever saying “no” so benign neglect has become a way of life. There’s even a dedicated verb to express it /tannish/ – Maha knows this of course!

Both techniques – benign neglect and intention management – are ways to compel others to do what we want them to do so they are the antithesis of collaborative, or perhaps, hospitable, work. If someone with whom I am meant to collaborate is doing this, it means that our activity has become a zero-sum game. My objective would then be to move them back to a collaborative mode. I see instructional designers – particularly in the US – positioning themselves as experts. Designers tell academic faculty “you need this”, and it’s often a hard sell.

Your accounts of doctors again remind me of Illich and his warning that the goal of medicine was to transform everyone into patients, bringing them under the direct control of doctors. This means that the real interests of the medical profession lie in promoting sickness, not health – healthy people are independent of the medical industry. This assumes that medicine is organized as an industry and that health is a commodity… of course, this is not true : )