Design is the real engine of our era

摘要

What is design? Tough question. It's hard to reduce to a single meaning a word that comprises a project and its intention. Whatever design is, it implies thinking that everything depends on the intention with which it is done, for only intention is able to fool nature. This brings us to what design's essence is: substituting the natural with the artificial, with help from technology. This includes building machines to solve problems that we often do not have, machines that bring out the hidden god in us. VilemFlusser, a strange Czech philosopher who went to live in Brazil, said as much many years ago. He died in a stupid car accident while visiting his native city of Prague. Today, everybody is convinced; it is clear that design is the real engine of our era; it represents the ultimate ideology, precisely at a time when ideologies seem to have vanished.