"There was once a time when design was a vehicle for social change, for political disruption, for speaking up and giving a big “fuck you” to the status quo."
I'm tempted to just say "no there wasn't." There were good designs during times of social change. Feels that this is a general "rising tide lifts all boats" situation, though. Probably more accurate to say survivor bias.
That is, I find it hard to believe that the "designs" truly facilitated these changes, so much as they helped what was already moving. Think of it as the coefficient of friction for moving bodies. The designs and such are enough to overcome the kinetic values, but not static ones.
I agree, but I think what he's trying to get at is that designers were more politically engaged on the whole, especially during Modernism. However, it also had its downsides, the major being design hubris (e.g. over-planned cities, complete top-down organizational thinking, treating all people interchangeably, etc).
There were far less people who could call themselves designers at the time. It was a slower craft and took more training.
It's like in music. Yeah, there were other bands other than the Beatles and Rolling Stones, but it was harder to produce and distribute music back then. Thus, the industry was more monolithic than it is now. The ones we talk about now are more representative of the state of the industry back then than Lady Gaga (or whatever) is of now.
There may have been less people that would call themselves designers, but I would wager it is still larger than the body of folks you and this link have in mind.
Further, and here is where it is exactly survivor bias. You have to show that there weren't other people trying to be designers. That the ones you are focusing on are the ones that were successfully doing it, is what makes it survivor bias.
And the survivor bias. Do you really think there were no other folks doing design work back then? Remember, the claim is that design as a whole was more instrumental in social change and whatnot.
For that to be true, every other person doing design back then would have had to have been just as political.
I'm tempted to just say "no there wasn't." There were good designs during times of social change. Feels that this is a general "rising tide lifts all boats" situation, though. Probably more accurate to say survivor bias.
That is, I find it hard to believe that the "designs" truly facilitated these changes, so much as they helped what was already moving. Think of it as the coefficient of friction for moving bodies. The designs and such are enough to overcome the kinetic values, but not static ones.