The following is a passage in a book I'm current enjoying:
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All design is an education of a sort. it may be education by studying or teaching at a school or university, or it may be education through design. In the latter case the designer attempts to educate his manufacturer-client and the people at the market place. Because in most cases the designer has been relegated (or, more often, relegated himself) to the production of "toys for adults" and a whole potpourri of gleaming, glistening, useless gadgets, the question of responsibility is a difficult one to raise. Young people, teenagers, and pre-pubescents have been propagandized into buying, collecting, and soon discarding useless, expensive trash. It is only rarely that young people overcome this indoctrination.
One notable rebellion against it, however, did occur in Sweden a few years ago when a 10-day "Teen-agers' Fair" attempting to promote products for a teen-age market was boycotted so thoroughly it nearly got put out of business. According to a report in Sweden NOW (Vol. 2, No. 12, 1968), a good number of youths resisted what they considered over-consumption by holding their own "Anti-Fair," where the slogan of the day was "Hell, no, we won't buy!" On the big day, buses collected teens from all over Stockholm and drove them to the experimental theatres where special programs of politically engagé films and plays were scheduled and such subjects as world hunger, pollution, and drugs were discussed in workshop sessions. In the kids' opinion, the "Teen-agers' Fair" was just the beginning of a systematic plan to exploit young Europeans by enticing them to want more clothes, cars and "status junk."
But Sweden (once again) is the exception rather than the rule.
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Papanek, Victor. "Snake Oil and Thalomide: Mass Leisure, and Phony Fads in the Abundant Society." Design For The Real World. Pantheon Books, 1970. 87.
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