Should the Culture of Participation inform a new Ethics of Design?

This paper aims to reflect on the role of Culture of Participation in fostering an Ethics of Design, as a means of true innovation in contemporary society. Participation often stands on commonalities, empathy and the desire to share our own beliefs and world views. The design of artifacts has as its first, though implicit purpose, to convey a message. Our economy relies even more on knowledge-intensive practices and tools, as a powerful lens of analysing problems and finding solutions. Being aware of the message that a powerful knowledge technology may convey offers a unprecedented instrument to improve ours and others lives, when wisely and ethically understood. Starting from a critical consideration of the “comfortable numbness” in mainstream IT design, we would like to suggest how inescapable reflections rooting in STS and in semiotic engineering may help discuss culture of participation from the alternative perspective of the “power” of design.