politics, imperialism, human dignity.

cameron tonkinwise asks: "are the ideas that are being collected not just remedial of cost-cutting forced by poor planning and under investment, but genuine innovations, creating more valuable ways of sustaining our societies?"

this becomes kind of a critical question of whether design should run along behind the world trying to clean up after the problems or abandon what's failed and run ahead to try to pave the way? what's more ethical? this is a little tangential to the topic, but i still wonder.

also, where did people get the idea that it was possible to be apolitical in the first place? i don't get it.

emily pilloton quotes: "nothing is so cut and dried, particularly in a corner of the design world that is so new, so misunderstood, and so much still a work in progress, that some days the best we can do is just to keep trucking--eloquently put by patagonia founder yvon chouinard, 'to do good, you first have to do something.'"

are there circumstances, still, where doing something can do more harm than good? or is intervening always the better option?

richard buchanan writes: "human-centered design is fundamentally an affirmation of human dignity."

does this change the way we should focus on a particular user base? does this have a buried implication that if something is unusable to anyone, it does a disservice to everyone?

"he might be giant"/"guerilla street postering"/"adbusters"

shepard fairey says: "'i hate stuff that's too self-righteous.' rather than subject people to sloganeering, he wants them to have their own epiphanies.'"

is this stance compatible with the idea of ethical design, the sort that fairey might call "self-righteous" but also works directly towards a beneficial end?

robbie conal's guerilla street postering proclaims "colloquial american english is the most subversive form of communication on the planet, and humor helps."

what is it about that, the slang and low-brow, that becomes the strongest way to communicate?

kalle lasn describes "true cost": "simply means that before designers begin work on a new product, they consider the ecological and psychological consequences of what they do. in other words, they plan to minimize the damage before they maximize the cool." 

how likely is it that this is always going to be an uphill battle against the client? will values ever shift to the point that this is a consideration that is not our responsibility alone to consider?