Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

With the arrogance and lack of wordly perspective only a designer could muster (and one whose expertise is making computer interfaces at that) the author makes a polemic argument that somehow designers are responsible for the impact of all that they design in the world. He has some valid points when it comes to the closed worlds of Facebook and Twitter, but loses all grasp with reality when extending the argument farther afield from what he knows. As if the designer of the internal combustion engine in your car is somehow responsible for the policy failures of our government to curb global warming, or even has the levers to rationally address global warming. I'm sympathetic to the idea we need more ethics in corporate work, but this book is the simplistic ideology of a person who hasn't thought very deeply about the problem but simply sees his chosen profession as the hammer to fix all too many problems in the world. At least we can be thankful he didn't go into law. Should we blame the designers of cars because making cars effective at their job also makes them easy to abuse without governments providing for proper urban planning and public transportation? Should we really blame Twitter for the abuses on its platform any more than we should blame the designers of other open forms of communications? Should we blame the original designer of the book for the hateful books that are written? Should we blame Alexander Bell for not doing more to preclude abusive phone calls? What the author fails to understand is that design cannot fix culture, and he's got the tail and the dog reversed. Designers cannot save us, and only a designer would have the arrogance to see such responsibility. The premise of taking responsibility for moral choices in corporate work is appealing--for anybody in any role--but the execution here is deeply disappointing. If you have any illusions as to the maturity of thought you'll encounter inside these pages, I encourage you to use Amazon's "read this" feature to read the introduction to the book. You'll see that you're in for a provincial and naively view of the world from somebody who flatters themselves and their chosen profession with nearly infinitely more impact than they actually have.