P N T S . U S

an ontological design studio

"In ontological designing we are doing more than asking what can be built. We are engaging in a philosophical discourse about the self – about what we can do and what can be. Tools are fundamental to action, and through our actions we generate the world. The transformation we are concerned with is not a technical one, but a continuing evolution of how we understand our surroundings and ourselves – of how we continue becoming the beings we are."

— Fernando Flores & Terry Winograd

"What human beings are and will become is decided in the shape of our tools no less than in the action of statesmen and political movements. The design of technology is thus an ontological decision fraught with political consequences. The exclusion of the vast majority from participation in this decision is profoundly undemocratic."

— Andrew Feenberg

"It is the kind of human we are, at the moment in which we have access to technology, either as users or observers, what determines how we use it or what we see in it."

— Peter Bond

literature review

Last updated January 7th, 2023 by Andrea Mignolo