I rejoice to think that some industrial designers have at last outlived the intrusive superficiality of post modernism and designerism! It's not always that I retain confidence in the power of simple but hard-to-achieve rightness to prevail against organised** inhumanity and insensitivity.

As I wrote those words I was thinking of Jack Howe (who recently died at was it 92?) and the others from whom I learnt the skills and virtues of sensitive modernism and how it has prevailed... Finding its limitations I moved to something more comprehensive. This is a journey I'm still making...

...a journey towards what, I still ask... and though the answer is not yet in my mind I will try to answer it in whatever words may follow:

...this journey, beyond the limits of industrial design and ergonomics as I knew them (in the 1950s, 60s and 70s) is towards ways of perceiving and changing not just industrial products but our way of life. And what do I mean by that? Whose way of life do I mean, what kind of change, and why is it needed, etc.?

I'll try to answer those questions one by one.

1. What do I mean by 'changing our way of life'?

To change what seems to me wrong - the inhumanity, the devaluing of people, the mechanisation of life, these very words are inhuman in that they exclude what is physically alive and in any way inspiring... my hope is that modern life becomes a joy and a pleasure, not a pointless sacrifice of human life and nature for power, money and short-term advantage, of some not all. (This sounds much more narrowly political than I expected it to - am I forgetting something?)

2. Whose way of life do I mean?

That of everyone, oppressors and oppressed, rich and poor, industrialised or not yet - everyone who is affected by industrial processes - and everyone who affects them and carries them out.

3.What kind of changes?

For human life to be improved ... for world problems to be solved, not shelved, and for each element of industrial living, and especially its tempo and conditions to be slower, more comfortable, unstressful and non-destructive... And certainly no more wars, famines, ethnic cleansings, and all such collective sins.

4. Why is change needed?

Out of respect for oneself and for each other... Surely no more need be said - just get on with it! (Me too.)

**Organised inhumanity and insensitivity - for me this is a new term - implying that social ills are socially caused.

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