Today, the 21st century is rediscovering another new form of design: the design of time. Or, better said, the design of that relation between time and space that translates into speed. The beginning of our century faces us with a set of challenges - energy, climate, demography, water - that question the central and obsessive idea that informed the 20th century: that of "saving" time by means of increasingly faster travel, faster vehicles, faster cities, faster people. An idea that today is questioned on a global scale, which leads to an authentic paradox since globalization is (among other things) the implementation of speed on a global level. Among those who had foreseen this return to the past is Ivan Illich, an unusual philosopher, theologian and activist, who believed humankind's dream of speed had morphed into an obsession, taking the man of 20th century very far from his body, from the enhancement of his capacities, and ultimately from his essence. For Illich, the dream of speed had become a nightmare, in which humans, once free citizens, turned into time, energy, and mobility consumers: increasingly demanding customers who want better quality products and who are not interested in defining a different dimension of consumption.
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