TEDTalks: Philippe Starck (2007)

3 Types of Designer:

• The cynical designer - designs as a product for marketing
• The narcissistic design - who only designs for other fantastic designers
• Another kind of designer - tries to make the object for the result, and for the human being who'll use it.

"The big challenge" - lack of production out of "the big image."
Describes as "the supermonkey" and the result of 4.5 billion years of evolution, and that we're at the half-point of this path. "That is our story. That is our beautiful poetry. We are a mutant."
"If we don't integrate the fact that we are a mutant, we completely miss the story. Every generation thinks that we're the final one. We mutate for 4 billion years before, but now, because it's me, we stop!"

The duty of vision: to be in the territory of intelligence. As our angle of vision changes toward our people, the more important you will be important in civilization, and for the story of our mutation.

"God is the answer when we don't know the answer." We see our line of evolution. From far it looks very smooth, but if you take a lens, the [line is very rough]. We have different duties in different parts of the cycle. There are periods of light and shadow, ie. during times of peace a certain type of person can flourish and be acceptable. When barbarians are back forget about [design and art]. You must go back to fight/to battle.

Starck claims that he's ashamed of being a designer during a period of darkness/war.
However, claims that we must finish the story. In perhaps, 50 years, we can leave our children the possibility of creating a new story, a new poetry. He claims that this is why he continues to work, even if it's for a toilet brush.

Our (uniquely correct) worldview?

Regardless of when or where we live, we inevitably perceive ourselves as the Middle Kingdom, and either we smile condescendingly at the mythmaking of other cultures or we go to war with them to force upon them our (uniquely correct) worldview. And if we are better at crafting weapons, we are generally able to persuade those we have physically conquered of the superiority of our myths over theirs.

Glad, John. (2008) "Future Human Evolution: Eugenics in the Twenty-First Century." Hermitage, Schuylkill Haven. p.8

...and although John Glad's book/extended paper on eugenics commences in an innocuous fashion, and gently argues its way around the politics of eugenics, I must explicitly state that there are elements of his book that I don't agree with. Despite the fact that he begins the book with a seemingly sociologically sensitive statement, by the time we reach the final stretch of his argument we read, "Abortion should be actively promoted, since it often serves as the last and even only resort for many low-IQ mothers who fail to practice contraception." (p.79). So much of his argument hinges upon the concept of IQ as a measure of the right to survive. It disturbs me that we still have people who measure intelligence and potential in a number. Read with caution.