Design's intrinsic relationship with change and its challenges for the 21st century

Design has an intrinsic and powerful relationship with change. At the broadest level, design’s relationship to change is so strong that we label parts of our history by the names of materials, artefacts, and technological developments characteristic of a time period, E.g. the stone age, bronze age, iron age, the industrial revolution, the computer age, and the internet age. Throughout history, the influence of inventions and technological developments, and associated designed goods, has radically transformed societies. For example, the early use of tools and simple agricultural machinery enabled a shift away from the hunter-gatherer and allowed new types of societies to develop. The industrial revolution, powered by steam, enabled mass production at an unprecedented scale, slowly improving living standards and allowing the middle class to emerge. The Model T Ford, the poster child for mass production via the assembly line, radically transformed the shape of our cities by offering affordable individual transport, shifting the mobilities of entire societies to the extent that many of us have become reliant on the use of cars.