I’ve been asked to give a lecture on ‘design in development’ at a conference in Amsterdam on 8 March. It will be an interesting opportunity to test the waters in Europe ahead of the main event of Doors 8 itself. I’m more than a little uneasy about the word ‘development’: it implies that we advanced people in the North have the right or even obligation to help backward people in the South ‘catch up’ with our own advanced condition. No, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m more in tune with the anonymous author of Bolo Bolo, “P.M”, for whom the North is ‘wrongly developed’. Standing still is not an option for either North or South, but I’m looking for a better word than development to use in my talk.
