Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling
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.
In the 1980s, Bruce Sterling became a leader of the 'cyberpunk' revolution -- a literary movement that combined the artistic ambition of science fiction's 1960s New Wave with the hard-core speculation associated with Verne, Wells, Heinlein, and Clarke. Cyberpunk's chief theme was the way technologies evolve us even as we evolve them, and its influence can be seen in almost every science fiction writer of note today, from Ken MacLeod to Alastair Reynolds to Cory Doctorow. Neuromancer author William Gibson may have been the best-known of the cyberpunks, but the movement's chief theorist and propagandist was Sterling, whose writing covered far more territory than that of his peers.... Sterling lives in Austin, Texas. He is a design professor at the moment -- the Visionary in Residence at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He has appeared on Nightline, The Late Show, MTV, and is the author of nine novels, three of which were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. The Difference Engine, co-written with William Gibson, was a national bestseller. He has also published three short-story collections and two nonfiction books. He has written for many magazines, including Newsweek, Fortune, Harper's, Details, Whole Earth Review, and Wired, where he has been a contributing writer since its inception. He does public speaking as a hobby, and has addressed academics, market experts, experimental media groups, phone regulators, state bureaucrats, and architects, among others.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780262693264 |
| ISBN 10 | 0262693267 |
| Title | Shaping Things |
| Author | Bruce Sterling |
| Series | Shaping Things |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | MIT Press Ltd |
| Year published | 2005-10-07 |
| Number of pages | 152 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |