This book presents for the first time in English an array of essays on design by the seminal media critic and philosopher Vilรฉm Flusser. It puts forward the view that our future depends on design. In a series of insightful essays on such ordinary ""things"" as wheels, carpets, pots, umbrellas and tents, 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) r.;Cover; The Shape of Things A Philosophy of Design; Imprint Page; Contents; Introduction; About the Word Design; Form and Material; War and the State of Things; About Forms and Formulae; The Designer's Way of Seeing; The Factory; The Lever Strikes Back; Shelters, Screens and Tents; Design: Obstacle for/to the Removal of Obstacles; Why Do Typewriters Go 'Click'?; The Ethics of Industrial Design?; Design as Theology; Wittgenstein's Architecture; Bare Walls; With As Many Holes As a Swiss Cheese; The Non-Thing 1; The Non-Thing 2; Carpets; Pots; Shamans and Dancers with Masks; The Submarine; Wheels.