Thanks for asking for clarification. Basically, what I’m saying is that the only way we’re going to get past all the scary stuff mentioned in the posting below is through innovation and redesign. The impediments against progress are so entrenched and woven into our culture we can scarcely see them. Fanciful though it may sound, I believe design is our responsibility. This includes redesigning the major gateway structures and systems, i.e. corporations, market systems, banks. As we learn more everyday about how our government has been serving the interests of corporations and banks and not vice-versa, this is a fundamental issue for redesign. The effects of corps who are operating globally, under the radar and for the sole purpose of profitability is catastrophic. Free market devotees feel a duty to preserve this system. We’re stuck on a design model that cries for revision. Much work has been done rethinking the responsibilities of corps to include not just the self-interest of members and shareholders, but it’s hardly the norm. Madison Avenue and the ad industry appealed to that self-interest but introduced creative thinking into the corporate mindset, albeit in a limited way. Phase One of design revolution. Of course, the benefits of advertising can be vigorously argued, but I’m speaking in the meta-sense. Advertising connects corporations to their surrounding cultures and the market forces an inter-relationship. (Unless an elaborate system of inter-markets insulates corps from the mainstream, which is basically what I think Bush was hired to oversee for his cronies. If so, that is a huge design problem, too.) The green revolution extends this principle to include the consumer as well as the corporation. With the global digital revolution and consumer/environmental awareness, our depth of perception has expanded to the point where yes, I think everything is new. The entire system of competition has been transformed, partly because of an open-source revolution that drives the internet. Open-source means shared - and shared for free. So, if a designer is out there dreaming up a new widget for your computer, he’ll offer it up to anyone who wants to use it. This might lead to another idea for a widget that leads to another widget and so on. Profitability arises in tangible and less tangible ways. Like the kids downloading songs for free led to i-Tunes which gave us the i-Pod and access to so much more music. Barriers against innovation and inertia have been removed with open source. This momentum unleashes more design and design creates momentum. Phase Two. This means of operating is closer to how women have been sustaining cultures for eons. If you had a mother with more than one kid, she figured out how to share whatever was available and strive for fairness and equal distribution within her family and often extended that thinking into the community. This capacity has always kept civilizations glued together and has never been valued or acknowledged. It’s a design model, too. So if we combine the three - rethinking systems, markets and negotiation - the future is up to us to design. We face many choices everyday - from which slippers to step into when we climb out of bed, to which lover we share that bed with, to where our beds are plunked down in this world, to how we find the resources we need and still find time to sleep. We’re always redesigning our lives. I think seeing how vital we are in the flow of cultural design is exciting, yes?