Shaping Things

"Shaping Things is about created objects and the environment, which is to say, it'sabout 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 hilarioushistory of shaped things. We have moved from an age of artifacts, made by hand, through complexmachines, to the current era of "gizmos." New forms of design and manufacture are appearing thatlack historical precedent, he writes; but the production methods, using archaic forms of energy andmaterials 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, baroquelymulti-featured, and programmable ;that will be sustainable, enhanceable, and uniquely identifiable.Sterling coins the term "spime" for them, these future manufactured objects with informationalsupport so extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterialsystem. Spimes are designed on screens, fabricated by digital means, and precisely tracked throughspace and time. They are made of substances that can be folded back into the production stream offuture spimes, challenging all of us to become involved in their production. Spimes are coming, saysSterling. We will need these objects in order to live; we won't be able to surrender theiradvantages without awful consequences.The vision of Shaping Things is given material form by theintricate design of Lorraine Wild. Shaping Things is for designers and thinkers, engineers andscientists, entrepreneurs and financiers ;and anyone who wants to understand and be part of theprocess of technosocial transformation.

Lorraine Wild is an award-winning designer, a founder of Greybull Press, and a member of the faculty at the California Institute of the Arts.