At a time when so many aspects of our lives are changing at a relentless speed and on an unprecedented scale, design is increasingly seen as a way to help us benefit from the opportunities created by those changes (and to avoid their dangers). One of the world's leading design and culture commentators maps with resourcefulness and creativity how design is responding to an age of intense economic, political and ecological instability. Public interest is soaring as a new generation of designers is using advanced technologies to pursue their political and environmental objectives in increasingly ambitious projects, as well as to reinvent the objects and spaces we use every day.