Perspectives in computational design: A brief assessment of today's socio-technical context, promises, and challenges

Overwhelming factual evidence proves that digital technologies are much better suited to fixing at least some of today's socio-technical problems than the obsolete mechanical technologies we inherited from the twentieth century and which we are, at long last, phasing out. Everyone knows that digital mass-customization is cheaper, faster, smarter, and more environmentally sustainable, than the mechanical mass-production of standardized industrial goods; and everyone knows that the electronic transmission of information is cheaper, faster, smarter, and more environmentally sustainable, than the mechanical transportation of people and goods. Why then are so many neo-Luddite arguments being so vociferously and influentially evoked at all times and in all contexts to the detriment of sheer common sense? In short, why do digital technologies today—in computational design, and in general—have such a bad press?