The question "are we human?" is both urgent and ancient. Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley offer a multi-layered exploration of the intimate relationship between human and design. Their field notes offer an archaeology of the way design has gone viral and is now bigger than the world. They range across the last few hundred thousand years and the last few seconds to scrutinize the uniquely plastic relation between brain and artifact. A vivid portrait emerges. Design becomes the way humans ask questions and thereby continuously redesign themselves

• The mirror of design : spiderwebs, sediments radiation, extinction self-surveillance
• The plastic human : plasticity, strange artifacts interface
• Blows of design : technofossils, prehistory genetic continuum hands, ornament sexual selection
• The invention of the human : tools, brain, curiosity
• The ornamental species : domestication, beads, networks, thinking strings, useless things
• New from nowhere : mechanical life, good design, morality, failure toys, functionalsim
• Good design is an anesthetic : smoothness, shock, smile shock absorber, nerves
• The design of health : dissection, x-ray, tuberculosis, fatigue, allergies, autoimmune burnout
• Human-centered design : camping, artificial limbs biology,survival, self-destruction, primal scene
• The frictionless silhouette : normal, human engineering, automaton biotechnique, discipline
• Designing the body :bodybuilding, hedonism nudism, libido, stomach psyche
• Design as perversion : fetishism, bondage voyeurism, erotica scatology, pedophilia
• Designing a ghost : scalefigure, protohumans clothing, lurking shadows
• The unstable body : microbiome, prosthetics plastic surgery, drugs biodesign, chimera
• Homo cellular : intimacy, connectivity shelter, computation selfie, surveillance
• Design in 2 seconds : social media, avatar hybrid space, the bed postlabor, self-design