Shaping Things (Mediaworks Pamphlets)

I ordered this little book after an enthusiastic recommendation from Charlie Stross. Shaping Things is where Bruce Sterling lays out his idea for what some futurists are calling the Bright Spime Future (in contrast to Joshua Ellis’ Grim Meathook Future). He discusses the progress of technocultures, from handcrafted items to mass production, and coins a neologism, “spime”, to describe “manufactured objects whose informational support is so overwhelmingly extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system.” The book then explores how this will be necessary in order to create a sustainable technoculture that can handle reuse and recycling, and the technological underpinnings of that show more technoculture. (He rejects the hair-shirt greens; we need to go forward, not backward.)

The book is an excellent starting point for thinking about our next technological steps. Sterling is up front that the book is a signpost, not a roadmap, but I like the way it’s pointing.

The book itself is about design, and has a great deal more design than most books; its layout is much like I would imagine Wired Magazine to look like if it grew up. The use of color and font changes is surprising to someone used to ordinary text, but it supports the text rather than distracting from it. show less

Internet of Things contrarian views from Bruce Sterling are more than a warning about the issues we open by transforming everyday objects into sensing machines. The book should shape the base criticism of IoT for any analysis of society and technology use in the future. The book is basically somewhere between a philosophical text and a manifesto, where the format can actually lead to confusion and makes some of the content easy to misunderstand.
In this book we miss the positive dream of IoT which is easy enough to access from popular culture, or many other texts.

Sterling sketches a historical perspective on our lives with artifacts, from craft society and industrialism to consumerism and beyond. More specifically, the beyond that is envisioned is a world in which the material and the virtual blend together in manufactured objects that Sterling calls "spimes." Primitive spime precursors are RFID-enhanced objects, where the key element is that each entity has a unique identity. Sterling discusses the designer’s role as well as the economy and sustainablility of a possible technosocial future of ubiquitous spimes. The ideas are generally bold, inspirational and give me the sense of capturing something vital in design even though they are painted with a broad brush. My main disappointment is the show more graphic design, which is unusually self-conscious and apparently aims to highlight the ideas but in my opinion rather works to distract me from the author’s voice. show less

This is a tough read. On first pass, I wasn't quite getting it. After several conversations and sifting thru it again, I'm locking onto Bruce's story.

You can feel spimes coming. They're damn close.

Manage your life with spimes... all on your celltop, desktop, mindtop.

Rock on Bruce. Maybe I still don't get quite everything in the short book but this much I do get: spimes are a bunch of services that surround other services... which in turn will help us see, manage, and define our lives. Your financial life has 30+ services surrounding it... banking, saving, checking, mortgages, retirement, stocks, micro investments, spending sprees, etc. I want to see my LifeSpimeDashboard.

Shaping things is a lovely mind screw.

Bruce Sterling is a science-fiction writer and he should stay that way. I still cannot understand why he was commisioned to write this book. He doesn't really seem to grasp what design really entails. Rather, he speaks about it like an outsider would speak. His comments are often unsubstantial--lacking much relevance. However, he does make some interesting insights into a future world of spimes and bots. And, on some level, I did appreciate his matter-of-fact way of discussing the field.

In general I was confused what his point is. He makes some vague statement that the book is about 'everything' but to me it just amounted to nothing. My views are subjective as I've heard him in interviews talking on these subjects previously. show more Nonetheless he himself seems too technologically-centered and misses many philosophical points of design (or, over-simplifies them). Specifically, I do not understand his fascination with RFID (or arphid as he calls it). In the book he basically constructs a world centered around these types of things and proposes hypothetical questions about how this will affect design.

I have problems with people who forecast in almost any field--especially technology. Predictions and models for the future can be useful in terms of creating scenarios for use (as he mentions well) but this book goes beyond into the realm of science-fiction. He creates a world that is based on too many assumptions (such as the pervasiveness and ubiquity of arphids). I suppose if I am to read futurist perspectives I like to buy what I'm being sold and Sterling did not sell me on his construction. show less

Was disappointed by the book. Either I did not get it - I guess all opinions are timely and I might find myself to love the book if I read it again in a couple of year - or it is made of too many non-proven/documented/backed-up assertions. Too many neologisms also, which would just demonstrate that Bruce Sterling needs to create his own alternative reality separate from this world and this is for me bad futurology.
The "spime" theory were all objects are communication hubs and the "biot" society based on biotechnologic/sustainable objects are both relevant but still too obvious given todays technological trends to make this book groundbreaking.

Manifesto for now. Hugely important book, very short and readable. If you're a designer, you need to read this to understand any modern or otherwise material context you might seek to explore.