The argument in the first bit starts with Rushkoff suggesting that people increasingly often find themselves forced to make choices that go against their better judgment because they believe that these choices are the only sensible way to act under the relevant circumstances. Here's an example:

[I]n New Jersey, Carla, a telephone associate for one of the top three HMO plans in the United States...is paid a salary as well as a monthly bonus based on the number of claims she can "retire" without payment. Without resorting to fraud, Carla is supposed to discourage false claims by making all claims harder to register, in general. That's how Carla's supervisor explained it to her when she asked, point-blank, if she was supposed to mislead customers. She feels bad about it, but Carla is now the principal breadwinner in her family, her husband having lost a lot of his contracting work to the stalled market for new homes. And, in the end, she is preventing fraud. How does Carla sleep at night, knowing that she has spent her day persuading people to pay for services for which they are actually covered? After seeing a commercial on TV, she switched from Ambien to Lunesta.

The book, or at least this part of it, will attempt to evalute the generation and interpretation of the circumstances that engender this kind of ethical dissonance. Rushkoff calls the generative worldview corporatism, a mindset in which we adopt a role more like that of a share-holder than that of a member of a society. Under this mindset and the resulting set of real-world circumstances, "it's as if the world itself pushes us toward self-interested, short-term decisions," and the "more decisions we make in this way, the more we contribute to the very conditions leading to this awfully sloped landscape. In a dehumanizing and self-denying cycle, we make too many choices that--all things being equal--we'd prefer not to make."

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Every time Nick and I come up with a design, a strategy, or a campaign to pitch to a client, we have a meeting where we apply ourselves to this question: "Is this design ethical?"

When we first started DLB, one of our guiding principles was that we weren't going to take any jobs in which we thought we might be aiding or abetting something that was going to make our world worse. More than that, we wanted to focus on developing white-hat design and advertising techniques for a technological environment that makes it so easy to cut corners, to use ugly or unwholesome technical or psychological techniques.

Of course, this is a battle that gets won or lost anew every day, and the best you can hope for is that over time, you can load up the right side of the scale. But enough sentimental rambling. I promised you homework:

Screen capture from Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru.

Go out and get a copy of Akira Kurosawa's 1952 masterpiece, Ikiru. Watch it. Learn an important lesson about life, courage, humility and making your own happiness — but above all about doing ethical work. Then apply it to your own work; get out there and design better.

Tiny Showcase usually showcases (and sells limited editions of) tiny works of art. However, recently "inspired by the posters on classroom walls, but free from any commitment to reality," TS has a giant poster created by Ray Fenwick – Life of Mystery — An Illustrated Guide – on offer.

The thing about KEYS is that they're incomplete...

Besides being pithy, mirthful and incredibly well typeset, has as its centerpiece a sort of "Life of Mystery" manifesto, which I'll paraphrase for you now:

Life holds plenty of mystery, but it often seems like the wrong kind of mystery. Life's mysteries are usually either depressing or bland. Fortunately, there's another kind of mystery, the fun kind, the kind that "leaves you spun out in the most amazing ways." This mystery is a feeling, a vague sense of mysteriousness. We can create a life of mysteriousness: We can feel like that forever!

I think this addresses something that designers often forget: Sometimes the best parts of our experience with stuff in the world is getting "spun out" in a cool way. Think about how cool early viral marketing could feel, or even think about the infamous ATHF incident in Boston, and then ask yourself, when you're setting off to design something: Is there some way I can make this engage people in that fun kind of mystery?

It's important! And we know it's important, because it's exactly why we're designers. Designing stuff is a way of coming into work every day and addressing the fun kind of mysteries in life.

So here's a mentality shift to ponder for your manifesto: Don't even try to address the loose ends out of existence; design the loose ends!