by De Tomaso
"what is needed in design and use of the most post-modern media and technologies - the information and communication technology - is not a modernist caught in a solidified objectivity in the design of modern objects in steel, glass and concrete, but a comprehensive sensuality in the design of meaningful interactive and virtual stories and environments.
what is needed is not the modern praise of new technology, but a critical and creative aesthetic-technical production orientation that unites modern information and communication technology with design, art, culture and society, and the same time places the development of the new mediating technologies in their real every day context of changes on lifestyle, work and leisure.
what is needed is the development of the aesthetics of the information and communication technology society in a scandinavian design that unites a democratic perspective emphasizing open dialogue and active user participation, with the development of edifying cultural experiences and the production of useful, interesting, functional and maybe even beautiful and amusing every day things for ordinary people.
what is needed is humanistic and user-oriented education and research that will develop both a critical stance to information and communication technology, and at the same time competence to design, compose, and tell stories using the new mediating technologies"
[ in manifesto for a digital bauhaus, Ehn 1998 ]
