Shaping Things (Mediaworks Pamphlets) | 
| Author: Bruce Sterling
Creator: Lorraine Wild
Publisher: The MIT Press
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
Buy New: $11.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 42054
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 152
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 5.3 x 0.4
ISBN: 0262693267
Dewey Decimal Number: 745.2
EAN: 9780262693264
ASIN: 0262693267
Publication Date: September 1, 2005
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Product Description
"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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 good idea, poor book June 5, 2008
i had high hopes but was vey dissapointed, fortunatley it is a very short book so i stuck it out, (to be fair there are one or two worthwhile parts) i really did not like the writing style a lot of waffel to make pritty staight forward points. the general idea is quite valid and interesting but poorly extrapolated and supported. just watch the ted talk from bruce.
 Techno-futuristic ruminations on "spimes" and sustainability August 31, 2007
Type a few words into Google and you can find a sushi restaurant, a movie theater, concert tickets or a new car. But if you misplace your car keys in your house, you still have to search the old-fashioned way: room by room, cushion by cushion, coat pocket by coat pocket. If Bruce Sterling is correct, though, one day you'll Google your keys. And your shoes. And your dog. This is the nascent "Internet of things" made possible by technology, including such items as radio frequency ID tags and traceable product life cycle management. That is where technology is going: to the interactive "spime," Sterling's term for objects that will arrive with data attached. In this visually arresting novella-sized essay, Sterling riffs on a number of scenarios, from customized-to-order cell phones to products that "know" how much carbon their construction required. His aphoristic prose seems at times like madness, but there's method in it: Sterling urges designers to make beautifully sustainable products rather than more proto-trash. We believe his book could reform your ideas about design and provide a stock of carbon-neutral insights you can deliver to your colleagues over a recyclable cup filled with shade-grown coffee.
This book is a little too short. August 8, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is 'wafer thin', I would recommend John ThakorsIn the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World instead, it is goes into a lot more depth, but is still a sci-fi.
A tool, in a way... July 19, 2007
This is such a short read, and such a good read - it really is a tool, more of a reminder. The way some people put a model of their dream car on their desk, to remind them their goal, this book should be kept around, read once or twice a year to remind oneself to put purpose, intelligence, and diligence into what you create. I think I'll start giving copies of this to new employees...
Setting the agenda.. December 15, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
If you're looking for a book on sustainable design, the intertwining of the informational and the material, and RFID, look no further.
Sterling's account is more than a book for designers. Though some angles tend to originate from design-related topics, the implications and responsibilities pertaining to design cannot belong to a community of designers per se.
That's a pretty self-evident idea of course, but allow me to elucidate.
When Sterling argues that "we need a designed metahistory", this pertains to the idea that the information that is related to objects / spimes / shaping things needs to be designed. Given the fact that more and more objects are tagged, and thereby enrolled in a global information architecture, this implies that 'design' has the ability to influence the way we relate to object-data.
And this is by no means a scenario that is sci-fi: take the EPCglobal architecture as an example. Sterling is perfectly aware of this.
For me, the book provided a framework in which many more things can be deployed.. But I suppose the book's effects will depend on the mindset of the reader. The capacity of the book to create new concepts and new levels of thought is obviously there. To me, the ability of a written work to do this is what makes a book great.
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