Designing the Future

I’m proud to say that I’ve been a card-carrying member of the Viridian Design Movement since its inception. Since very few of you have probably ever heard of this particular movement – a situation I hope will soon begin to change – a bit of background is in order.

The Viridian Design Movement is the brainchild of noted science fiction author and sometimes journalist, Bruce Sterling. Its central tenets are fully explained here and here but for brevity’s sake they are;

1. The fight against global warming is essentially lost. By the time we turn the ship of the global economy around the changes in climate wrought by industrial civilization will be here to stay.
2. The first is no reason to not begin to prepare for a more sustainable future. To that end Viridians believe that mankind’s dependence on carbon is fundamentally a design problem. The dependence of our economies on consumer products means that sustainability must include everything, and in order to sell sustainability is has to be sexy and trendy. People have to want to conserve not because they have to but because it is cool. That they can feel good about being cool is just a bonus.

There is much more to it than that, but this mean understanding will suffice for the point below to become apparent.

This evening while catching a snippet of the PBS program Wall $treet Week with FORTUNE, I was startled to see a segment related to a design feature in FORTUNE Magazine’s December 13^th Issue. Check out this quote from panelist, Virginia Postrel,

First of all, to designers within the design community there's a big emphasis on sustainability and environmental values today, and so design students even are often evaluated in part on whether they include that in their projects. But what I really think makes this work is that it's beautiful. It's more aesthetically pleasing than a plastic plate or a paper plate, so you're willing to pay more, even if you couldn't care less about the environment. And so it's a coming together of two things. First of all, the appreciation of beauty for its own sake, as opposed to just the function of being able to throw it away, and the other thing that I think designers are realizing is that the way to sell sustainability is not to sell it as a hair shirt but rather to sell it as something that's cool and sensorially pleasurable.

I hope this all heralds the beginning of a turning of a corner if you will – there’s a phrase with a newfound loadedness – in consumer awareness. Nothing any resident of say, Clinton will notice right away mind. But the beginning of a subtle shift that, as many fashion and design trends do, will begin to snowball. I hope that at some point some folks will begin to call this movement what it is, Viridan.

Postrel’s quote is also quite relevant to us as progressives. Simply replace designers with Democrats; sustainability with progressivism and you get a proper mindset for the Democratic Party going forward. Okay, all except the bit about being sensorially pleasureable perhaps. Although I wouldn't be too hasty to rule that out myself.

More on this anon.