Quantum physics says that there is an infinite number of possibilities and parallels to the one that we know, and every event is also played out in a parallel world. It's kind of a crazy idea, but someone called Saibal Mitra at the University of Amsterdam says that if you could back up your memory in case of a catastrophic event, you could actually revert to that back-up and find an alternative world in which the Earth didn't explode or collide with Mars.

If you look at the steps being taken towards Scottish independence, they're being dealt with politically in very dull and boring ways. So if you just feverishly speculate numbered but random Scotlands - because in the book, it's a random sequence of possibilities - you can imagine many ways in which different things might happen.

I enjoy the optimism of design, even though we can see it as doomed. But I'm telling most people that I'm not writing about design any more this year. It makes no sense at all during the recession unless you write about sustainable or ethical design-very basic things, like how to get clean water in countries with a shortage of it.

Pablo Picasso said, "Art is the lie that tells the truth," and it's not a terribly radical statement. It's always been that you can tell truth through fiction. And this idea also comes from nuclear physics.

Maybe it's the Calvinist guilt about capitalism or mercantilism. But, I like the idea of doing things that only exist for as long as they exist, which are not archives, which are not sold or prepared even. It's funny though, because a lot of my unreliable tours were inspired by the docents at the Japan Society, who are mostly these volunteers from the Upper East Side. They basically find positive messages in really nihilist, perverse videos. So they were my inspiration.

Every lie creates a parallel world.. a world in which it is true

Design is interesting because it's utopian. Art is often a jaundiced commentary on contemporary life. Design is always about the future; it's always about something great and new that's come out that will make the future brighter. It has this weird 18th - century positivism about it.