This book presents for the first time in English an array of essays on design by the seminal Czech-born media critic and philosopher Vilem Flusser. It puts forward the view that our future depends on design. In a series of insightful short essays, touching on a wide range of subjects - industrial ethics; tents, umbrellas and shamans; the architecture of Wittgenstein; ceramic vessels as bearers of social meaning - Flusser emphasizes the interrelationships between art and science, theology and technology, and archaeology and architecture. Just as formal creativity has produced both weapons of destruction and great works of art, Flusser believed that the shape of things (and the designs behind them) represent both a threat and an opportunity for designers of the future.