Interesting article by Starck, extract // source: telerama magazine, france (issue 24-30 October 09)

Q: so you feel that Design is useless?
A: Design has been amusing for a while, like a new kind of societal comfort, twenty years back. In a "civilized period", one could observe then, why not show some interest about a lamp? but now, today,with the emergencies we are facing... every trade has its time, and every time has its trade. To young people who want to be designers, i say that if they want to be designers, i say that this is not the time. Today, it is time to go to fight. And if they work well, in fifteen, twenty years, we'll be able to show some interest to design again.

Q: Going to fight, what do you mean?
A: It means being radical. When one is a producer of ideas and a producer of matter, like i am, one must reflect on how one can refuse matter. we are entering in the ecological "process". It might be a piece of cake for the cynical, but it is nonetheless an emergency! Since three four years, one looks for efficient means of action. In a materialistic society like ours, any question brings in a material answer, as if we could not reply to someone without trying to sell him a product! But now, we have serious possibilities, to finally move away from the traditional pattern of the matter. designer's work should be political. Questioning how we can save matter, how we can produce energy, how one can chance the way people think and act, how to make them feel disgusted about the saturday afternoon feel good shopping act... One must also explain, and raise an alarm. Who, beside me, can you hear raise the question of the 'after plastic' era? The after-petrol era, yes, but hte after plastic era that will take place in thirty years? Plastic is everywhere nowadays. Some say that there is recycling, but recycled plastic is useless. Other affirm that there is the bioplatic option, but transforming cereal fields in crappy plastic or fuel for our four wheelers, is a crime against humanity! Great famines, are announced for 2020-2022. But we are going to cut down 2/3rd of crops and forests to cultivate things that people can not eat?

Q: what are you working on at the moment?
A: On a lot of things. [...] - not that relevant besides the mention 500 euros wind mill for particulars.

Q: How do you live/apply the dematerialization of objects?
A: i am not a man of the object, but a man of the concept. This concept of dematerialization is what i have been preaching for thirty years! We are the only animal specie which controls the quality of the speed of evolution. But we are refusing to understand our mutations. If we were to become conscious of the beauty and intelligence of the muting Man, everything would start making sense. Why not accept this way our entry into 'bionism' (bionic era), the merging of body and electronic components - mainly the chip - that would help us maintain the speed of our evolution. Our society has forgotten the base scenario: where it is from, where it is going. It has forgotten that the foundation of our civilization is the idea of progress. That man is supposed to become more and more intelligent, and become better. These values are not new, they are those of all form of civilization. But we are so lost, greedy, that we forget that we are animals who are meant to live in tribes, that we forget to share too. But it is an absolute condition to our survival.