Money = Debt

[greg_mitch]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912

Zeitgeist: The addendum

Very long but interesting for the most part.

[greg_mitch]

Is the video too scary to comment?

[greg_mitch]

I guess this gets deleted...unless I have to do it somehow.

[Mep]

I saw that a long time ago. It mixes some facts with some real paranoia. Humans are just too stupid self serving animals for anything to work on that grand of scale. Sorry.

[DavidJames]

Crazy conspiracy theory stuff. No thanks.

[cowbot]

i find it kind of interesting as I have a background in Industrial Design, the dude that seems to have all the answers is a notable futurist-type ID'er.

Despite the mish-mash of slightly tweaked information, I think the solutions presented are pretty interesting. I can't speak for every industrial designer (or more broadly, every "applied artist," e.g. architects, graphic designers, industrial designers, and so on) but the solutions are a bit of a wet dream. Architects have long wanted to be social planners. I know I've often wondered what would be possible if we were not bounded by legitimate (i use that term loosely) institutions of human construct.

I personally believe that the notion of problem solving through techne, or technologos, is overshadowed by a desire for monetary profit. That is our wonderful paradox (one of many!). However, what the film tends to overlook is the immutable fact that no matter how intelligent our Designs may be, they are still inherently ours, and will always include our human failures in planning, our human misconceived intents and our general lack of foresight. The Venus project is upending almost every paradox (which is pretty impressive in its own right), but just doing so to flip a paradox is a hopelessly naive design solution.

The film does interest me due to it's application of emergence theory. I think that emergence theory, once it trickles down into the applied arts, is going to mesh very well with our contemporary understandings of the "value-add" of the Design process. "Creative" people (however silly the word "creative is) have understood for some time now that the systemic problems we face as a global culture cannot and will not be solved in any way which actually benefits all people unless we re-conceive the systems themselves. There is no iPod to solve world hunger, or a swoopy drawing sitting on a designer's desk that CAN solve a global economic crisis. But there is a potential for massive change to come in an emergent fashion.