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Hi Don, First let me tell you that your arguments are very solid, especially the one about the photograph you take anywhere. I was convinced that, for your notion of product design, culture, indeed does not matter for product design. Always at a certain point, in my semestrial life with the students we arrive to a point in which culture stands in the way and discussions arise about the 'thing'. I normally send them to look at the newspaper 'cultural' pages or 'cultural' supplements and take a look at what kind of pieces they can find. Mostly they find reviews and critics of books, films, art shows, theatrical plays, now and then some obituary or previews. In order to summarize, I suggest that newspapers, in their limited view of human daily life, regard culture as the place were objects fundamentally produced for interpretation (and not fundamentally produced for use) are interpreted. Culture seems to lie, even for common use objects, in the part of them that we interpret, especially when we are not using them. Since the early 19^th century, a discipline arose, to integrate the principles of art in the production of everyday objects. From the philosophical point of view, this aim was in line with the claim for art in everyday life from people like Schiller amongst others. From the economical point of view, the politicians that created the Government School of Design in the 1830's aimed to produce products so beautiful that they could overcome the French's in sales. (Sorry Jean, but overcoming the French seems always a good idea). Art is placed in the world to be interpreted so the artistic part of the products was provided by a new process of doing things that was starting to be called "Design". In a country were product design derived from architecture, and being architecture one of the three loving sisters of the fine arts (arti del disegno)I can only think about product design as an art and therefore culturally meaningful. I must say this very clearly: products that arrogantly pretend to be acultural are of no interest for me as a design researcher, because culture, as a refined human way of looking at things, must be embedded in Design. Best, Eduardo