Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It

by Mike Monteiro

There are things worth quitting for. There are things worth getting fired for. This is the time for good trouble.

The problem here isn’t someone making an unethical decision, although they are. The problem is the system which puts a worker in that position.

America punishes young people for wanting to learn. This needs to change.

We don’t walk away when things get hard. We walk away when things get impossible. My goal here is to affect change, not to cause mass unemployment.

Reading these, I wonder if Silicon Valley hasn’t accidentally been following this manual of sabotage for the past thirty years.

Know where your line is, know what it would take for you to put down your tools, because it has an effect. Your company cannot make work without workers. Also know what corrective action it would take for you to pick those tools back up.

When the platform we use to talk to family and old friends turns into a gun marketplace, and the people who run it refuse to fix it, we need to burn it to the ground. When that same network moves so fast that they break not just things, but tender things, fragile things, things with names, for the sake of those names, we need to burn it to the ground.

We have to see ourselves as being liable for our actions. We have to hold ourselves accountable for those actions, and just as importantly, our inactions. We need to hold our entire community accountable for doing the job the right way. We can and should argue. We can and should cajole. We can and should fight for the right thing. We can and should attempt to influence, educate, and instruct.

Finally, not doing the job correctly should have a cost. A doctor who steps outside their ethical framework loses the ability to practice medicine. A lawyer who steps outside their ethical framework loses the ability to practice law. A designer who builds a tool to lie to a regulatory body is likely to get a promotion. Time to end that bullshit.

Every industry starts out wild and then matures. The dangerous ones get regulated for society’s safety. We need to care more about the safe-being of the people using what we design than we care about how much profit those things generate. The world needs us in place as gatekeepers.

There’s a reason I wrote these last three chapters in this order. Community breeds standards; standards breed accountability; accountability breeds trust; licensure validates that trust. It’s a journey. It may be a long journey, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth taking. Do positive things.