"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.

Shaping Things (Mediaworks Pamphlets) PDF

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