Is Design Dead?

These past articles have left me with a strange feeling of.. something that is similar to boredom. Not in a bad or offensive sense, just something... aniclimactic. I end up feeling like these people are too surprised, or overly excited, or worried about the things they are talking about. It is a strange thing to experience. But this was the article that finally allowed me to understand why I was having those feelings. I looked at the dates. I finally laid my eyes on the dates when these materials were written. 
This piece of writing in particular (Is design dead?) was written for a conference that was held in the year 2000. That was nearly two decades ago (damn we are old!).  So now I understand that when these people talk abou this as if it was just discovered the day before or as if it was beamed down from an alien spaceship is because it was! (not the alien part). 

These authors were just learning and gathering experience with new ways of doing the things that they had been doing (probably) for years. They were indeed concerned with what it all meant and how the future was going to be for the industry they knew.

Today, even as rookies, most of us are familiar with iteration and evolution. We came about when these ideas were already out there and being used to produce software at the largest of scales. When Fowler says "no, design is not dead" it is obvious to me now, when I'm conscious that even when you build projects in iterations and evolutions you are always making little design choices, always desigining, even if at the tiniest of levels. But now I understand why it wasn't obvious to him. Why it wasn't obvious to them. Back then.