Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0262693267, Paperback)

"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.

Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0898709830, Paperback)

Responding to the Pope’s Apostolic Letter on the Rosary, his five new "Luminous Mysteries", and declaration of 2003 as "The Year of the Rosary", Fr. Groeschel presents this new book of meditations on all 20 mysteries of the rosary. Drawing on his vast personal experiences as well as the grand traditions of the Church, he takes us on a spiritual journey that will inspire us to greater depths of prayer. This special book includes: The Pope’s Letter on the Rosary, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, and lavishly illustrated with 20 classic color paintings.