Return to Home

Shaping Things Bruce Sterling (book design by Lorraine Wild and Stuart Smith) 2005 418 pages Complementary Texts Steve Mann Woodrow Barfield and Thomas Caudell Keywords Design Wearable computer Interface Design Media Theory Identity and Subject Formation Copyright © 2003-2008 Isabel Pedersen

Shaping Things is a book about designing the future and re-ordering the past in the pursuit of “futurity” (7). Sterling spells out his take on futurism in Chapter 18, when he writes: “I frankly care nothing for ‘Utopia’ or ‘Oblivion.’ If my long romance with futurism has taught me anything, it’s that neither of these terms has any meaning. They are mere verbal gasps of intellectual exhaustion. They mean only that the futurist has exhausted his personal ability to confront the passage of time.” (p. 138) Using a wine bottle as an exemplar, Sterling reveals ways that our everyday artifacts transition through relationships with technosocial orders, machine histories, and machine futures. The book discusses many current technologies in terms of their future potentials and ramifications. Sterling likes to play with language in order to estrange “given” terminologies. He challenges our assumptions by naming previously unnamed phenomenon. At other times, he renames phenomenon in order shake off our mundane views toward things. Shaping Things certainly provokes new thoughts.