From “Nudge”:

The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest or at the very least are better than the choices that would be made by someone else.  We claim that this assumption is false—indeed, obviously false… It seems reasonable to say that people make good choices in contexts in whic they have experience, good information and prompt feedback—say, choosing among ice cream flavors… They do less well in contexts in which they are inexperience and poorly informed, and in which feedback is slow or infrequent—say, in choosing between fruit and ice cream.

“Nudge”, and its psychological approach to responsible thinking, draws attention to the reality that sustainability can be achieved only when people are motivated to act responsibly.  The book claims we can empower people to make better choices for themselves and their futures through giving attention to the “choice architecture”.  His ideas toes the line between guidance and coercion, but I agree with the premise that we are all faulty decision makers.  Sometimes, we need our hands held to lead us to the best decisions.

From an interview with Nathan Shedroff author of “Design is The Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable” (taken from the core77 blog):

There are a bunch of things to understand about the principles of Sustainability. Most of these focus on building and using a Systems Perspective and why that’s critical to understanding Sustainability. These include why topics like Decentralization, Diversity, and Cooperation/Competition are important to understand. Next, all of Sustainability, including these principles, cross three main categories or domains. These are: Social Issues (or Human Capital), Environmental Issues (or Natural Capital) and Financial issues (or Financial Capital). Essentially, Sustainability just asks us to manage all of these forms of capital well. In theory, it sounds easy but, of course, in practice, it can be difficult since each of these (especially the social issues) can get complex. This is the first realization that many people come to when learning about Sustainability: that it’s not just about the environment.

I give props to anyone who can distill the essence of a global movement into a few understandable parts.  Cognitive scientists love categorization   I haven’t ordered his book yet but I believe he has a good lay-o’-the-land.  You can tell from the above analysis he’s put a good deal of thought into the theory behind sustainability.

Also interesting are his critiques of the current efforts, NGOs and blogs and start-ups (he also hates the term *GREEN*):

There are so many new NGOs and foundations and socially entrepreneurial start-ups but not enough conversation and cooperation between them all to be a more powerful force for positive change. Some of these are started out of ignorance of the other initiatives but many are started simply because someone has a passion and vision and doesn’t want it contaminated by someone else’s vision. We’re duplicating a lot of effort and we need to be more effective.

But most important of all, Shedroff is author to a well-respected book on User Experience, making him a winner in my book.

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Read Shedroff’s interview and tell me what you think about him.
You can buy DiTP by Shedroff at his website.

Buy Nudge from Amazon, or just ask me to borrow it