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Shaping Things (Mediaworks Pamphlets) Paperback – Illustrated, 11 Nov. 2005
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A guide to the next great wave of technology―an era of objects so programmable that they can be regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system.
"Shaping Things is about created objects and the environment, which is to say, it's about everything," writes Bruce Sterling in this addition to the Mediawork Pamphlet series. He adds: "Seen from sufficient distance, this is a small topic."
Sterling offers a brilliant, often hilarious history of shaped things. We have moved from an age of artifacts, made by hand, through complex machines, to the current era of "gizmos." New forms of design and manufacture are appearing that lack historical precedent, he writes; but the production methods, using archaic forms of energy and materials that are finite and toxic, are not sustainable. The future will see a new kind of object; we have the primitive forms of them now in our pockets and briefcases: user-alterable, baroquely multi-featured, and programmable, that will be sustainable, enhanceable, and uniquely identifiable. Sterling coins the term "spime" for them, these future-manufactured objects with informational support so extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system. Spimes are designed on screens, fabricated by digital means, and precisely tracked through space and time. They are made of substances that can be folded back into the production stream of future spimes, challenging all of us to become involved in their production. Spimes are coming, says Sterling. We will need these objects in order to live; we won't be able to surrender their advantages without awful consequences.
The vision of Shaping Things is given material form by the intricate design of Lorraine Wild. Shaping Things is for designers and thinkers, engineers and scientists, entrepreneurs and financiers; and anyone who wants to understand and be part of the process of technosocial transformation.
Review
Shaping Things is full of entirely readable large ideas, made palatable by Lorraine Wild's clean but evocative book design. The whole project exudes a confidence-building, you-too-can-be-an-architect-of-the-future tone, much like the work of Buckminster Fuller, who like Sterling was a practical visionary and often had to create a new language to describe his ideas...In the end, Shaping Things asks us to consider how we can create a sustainable future, using all the information available to us as consumers, without the preachiness that accompanies the environmental and sustainable lifestyle movements.
--Los Angeles Times Book Review--Shaping Things is really about shaping experiences. Sterling brilliantly makes you more aware of experiences that your customers have--or don't have--with objects...Shaping Things presents a robust typology of technologies to inspire marketers and provoke innovators into rethinking their market offerings' essential qualities.
--Michael Schrage--It's the most thought provoking thing I've read all year...I can tell that this is a book I'll return to again and again and get more out of it each time I do. It's a wonderful and timely work that is a must-read in an age of ubiquitous computation, universal information resources, and hacker-activist renaissance, there's no better primer for putting it all together.
-- --Cory Doctorow, BoingBoingAbout the Author
Lorraine Wild is an award-winning designer, a founder of Greybull Press, and a member of the faculty at the California Institute of the Arts.
- ISBN-109780262693264
- ISBN-13978-0262693264
- EditionIllustrated
- PublisherMIT Press
- Publication date11 Nov. 2005
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions13.97 x 0.84 x 19.05 cm
- Print length144 pages
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Product details
- ASIN : 0262693267
- Publisher : MIT Press; Illustrated edition (11 Nov. 2005)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 144 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780262693264
- ISBN-13 : 978-0262693264
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Dimensions : 13.97 x 0.84 x 19.05 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 822,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 465 in Astronomy & Cosmology References
- 541 in Computer Scientist Biographies
- 651 in Industrial Design Studies
- Customer reviews:
About the author

Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, editor, and critic,
was born in 1954. Best known for his ten science fiction
novels, he also writes short stories, book reviews,
design criticism, opinion columns, and introductions
for books ranging from Ernst Juenger to Jules Verne.
His nonfiction works include THE HACKER CRACKDOWN:
LAW AND DISORDER ON THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER (1992),
TOMORROW NOW: ENVISIONING THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS (2003),
and SHAPING THINGS (2005).
He is a contributing editor of WIRED magazine
and writes a weblog. During 2005,
he was the "Visionary in Residence" at Art Center
College of Design in Pasadena. In 2008 he
was the Guest Curator for the Share Festival
of Digital Art and Culture in Torino, Italy,
and the Visionary in Residence at the Sandberg
Instituut in Amsterdam. In 2011 he returned to
Art Center as "Visionary in Residence" to run
a special project on Augmented Reality.
He has appeared in ABC's Nightline, BBC's The Late Show,
CBC's Morningside, on MTV and TechTV, and in Time,
Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times,
Fortune, Nature, I.D., Metropolis, Technology Review,
Der Spiegel, La Stampa, La Repubblica, and many other venues.
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This book stems from his year as a design proffessor, it looks into the whole idea behind ubiquitous computing and imagines what web 5.0 will look like, and objects that will inhabit it, the 'spime' it also outlines the principles behind his thinking.
it is also a beautiful artifact in itself, some beautiful design
bottom line its a book on design not a fiction book, it is a speculative work, a peice of thinking and the reasoning behind it. if you are into the area of thaught its great, if not it still could be for you





