'By many accounts the great truths of philosophy and theory have today given way to the "chatter" of intelligence. We live, it is suggested, in a post-Enlightenment world in which fragmented philosophical, political and scientific truths appear and disappear so fast that ascertaining whether they are really true is impractical if not altogether impossible. No longer dictated by ideas or ideologies, everything now depends on credible intelligence, on whether something might be true.' Michael Speaks sketches a history of this intelligence paradigm and speculates about its implications for design practice. Michael Speaks has taught in art and architecture programmes at institutions across the Us and Europe. He was the founding Director of the Metropolitan Research and Design Post Graduate Program at SCI-Arc. He is founding editor of the cultural journal Polygraph and is currently a contributing editor for Architectural Record and an editorial board member of A+U.