Design for Micro-Utopias: Making the Unthinkable Possible (Design for Social Responsibility)

How can we design a better world? As voters and consumers we have become experts at choosing and complaining but have forgotten how to envisage what we really want. We have forgotten how to dream and without dreams humanity will become extinct.Designers have always found ways to realize dreams. At a time when we face so many dangers - both natural and self-imposed - it is vital to dream of alternative futures. This is why this book proudly explores utopianism, but a more tentative, temporary, pluralized and truncated version of the Utopia described by Sir Thomas More's famous novel of 1516 - 'micro-utopias' rather than one 'Utopia'.Referencing a wide range of philosophical thinking from Aristotle to the present day, western and eastern spiritual ideals, and scientific, biological and systems theory, John Wood argues for a metadesign approach that can bring about the realization of individual and social aspirations. "The Design of Micro-Utopias" offers remedies for our excessively individualistic, mechanistic and disconnected thinking. It reminds us that miracles are not unthinkable but that to achieve them - to build foundations for micro-utopias - requires synergistic 'design-thinking' to offer new modes of governance based on the positive rather than the negatives associated with legal deterrent and financial penalties.