Hasta La Ideas

Over at Design-Altruism-Project, David Stairs has sawed off his shotgun and taken out, well, just about all the usual suspects around design for social change. Core77 takes one of the first hits (a little obliquely though, on the shoulder, I think), and then all the king’s men fall one by one. It’s a great read, and besides the obvious schadenfreude yuks, Stairs has some fine points to make. Here’s one near the top:

For all our talk about “planning,” human beings don’t plan very well in the collective sense–civilization is just too complex. The beauty of the hives’ single-minded purpose doesn’t translate to people. As Americans we are raised to love independent choice, but this is precisely what leads to disaster when applied on a global scale. And it is no different with social design, where competition for the Internet “commons” is much more prevalent than cooperation. Add to this the fact that 98% of designers when asked say they want only to design, not plan, write grants, fund raise, correspond, or do any of the nine-hundred other nitty little things necessary to helping less fortunate people and you’re left with a large, well educated audience wearing blinders.

…and another later on:

If this blur of hysteria begins to make you feel a little woozy, join the club. I’m all about helping people, spend much time doing so, and I agree with Mariana [Amatullo] that there’s more than enough pain to go around in this world. The people trolling the net and re-posting RSS feeds for the pleasure of their Twitter “possees” are just engaging in a big circle jerk. But beyond such dim sighted initiatives something else lurks: the sudden widespread enthusiasm for social amelioration through design. It’s so terribly trendy to care, about the poor, the environment, and every form of “betterment” that I begin to assume we must be selling more design by fetishizing social relevance.

The comments are just starting to roll in, so by all means get in on the discussion. And for the record, I’m personally involved in several of the organizations and initiatives he discusses in the piece; didn’t stop me from enjoying it one bit.

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