Protein° favourite John Thackara has published a new design book called http://www.thackara.com/inthebubble/">In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World. Thackara, described as a "design guru, critic, and business provocateur" by Fast Company, thinks that we are filling our world with devices, systems, and products that are too complex to understand or to control, and as a result we often feel that we are the ones who are being controlled. Technology is not going away, but the time to discuss the ends it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communications, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected appliances that we are unleashing upon the world.  What impact will this stuff have on our daily lives?  Who will look after it, and how? Thackara, director of Doors of Perception, a design futures network based in Amsterdam and Bangalore, is convinced that "if we can design our way into difficulty, we can design our way out."  In the Bubble describes a transformation in design thinking, one based less on stuff, and more on people. It is a transformation that is taking place now, not in a remote science fiction future; it's not about, as he puts it, "the schlock of the new" but about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief informed by a wealth of real-world examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding social and technical innovation. Sounds good to me.