Design is an act of merging ontologies for the purpose of acceptance of one or more ontologies within others.

Role of a designer is to be a bridge between ontologies. Designers must understand both ontologies and discover the way way to fit them into a single product.

Knowledge can be defined as an ontology. Language is the dominant ontology management method in contemporary systems. It is more effective than imagery and other methods because contemporary systems depend highly on abstract yet precise ontologies. Therefore ontology, knowledge, and language are one in this article and will be presented by the “ontology”.

If a goal of a system is to increase collective intelligence and consciousness, system changes should be observed through ontology changes. Ontology changes between traditionalism, modernism, and postmodernism show what kind of language is needed for metamodernism and openness to increase collective intelligence and consciousness.

Traditionalism had a stable ontology. Modernism rapidly expanded the traditional ontology by adding to it and rarely changing it. Postmodernism is mostly focused on changing traditional and modern ontology, adding little to both. Postmodernism depends on closed centralized power to create these ontology changes.

Metamodernism and openness should direct ontology development towards following goals:
– Postmodernism expands instead of changes traditional and modern ontologies,
– Ontology changes are more open and less centralized,
– Adoption of non-binary (oscillating) ontologies.

If ontology development is directed towards these goals a system will experience increase collective intelligence and consciousness growth, and will avoid reductive conflict caused by closed and centralized ontology changes.