Design, Digested 30

Design is evolving—and designers need to evolve with it

‘While designers have evolved over the last 25 years to be advocates for the audience/customer, we now need to be advocates for the rest of everyone else, democracy, society, and the planet, itself.“ Nathan Shedroff

🔗 Read the article (on The Team W Blog)

Biden administration launches $1 billion effort to correct racist highway designs of the past

Stephanie Pollack, deputy administrator at the Federal Highway Administration, said there is a historic opportunity to right the wrongs of the past by investing in high-quality public transportation, pedestrian walkways, and linear parks and trails that encourage walking, biking, and improved mobility for nearby residents.

🔗 Read the article (on The Verge)

Why We Ignore the Obvious: The Psychology of Willful Blindness

How to counter the gradual narrowing of our horizons.

“Keep your baby eyes (which are the eyes of genius) on what we don’t know,” pioneering investigative journalist Lincoln Steffens wrote in a beautiful 1926 letter of life-advice to his baby son. And yet the folly of the human condition is precisely that we can’t know what we don’t know […]

🔗 Read the article (on The Marginalian)

Building a More Honest Internet

What would social media look like if it served the public interest?

Yes, technology should act in the service of humanity, not as an existential threat to it. But in the face of such a large problem, don’t we need something more creative, more ambitious? That is, something like radio? Radio was the first public service media, one that still thrives today. A new movement toward public service digital media may be what we need to counter the excesses and failures of today’s internet. Ethan Zuckerman

🔗 Read the article (on Columbia Journalism Review)

Greta Thunberg doesn’t want you to talk about her anymore

Thunberg did not want to be interviewed for this article — which is really the point, as POLITICO was reminded bluntly by several Fridays For Future activists. She doesn’t want to be the face of this global climate justice movement. That does not mean she’s stepping away from activism, her friends said.

🔗 Read the article (on Politico)