Institute For The Future

"Reading ""Shaping Things"""

I've started reading Bruce Sterling's Shaping Things. It's one of a cluster of books on smart things, pervasive computing, and the design and social challenges they'll present. (I'd definitely include Adam Greenfield's Everyware and John Thackara's In the Bubble in the genre; I'd also toss in Kim Vicente's The Human Factor, and Ben Shneiderman's Leonardo's Laptop.)

I suspect I'm going to be alternately impressed and exasperated by the book. Sterling as always has some great ideas, and he's never dull; while I might occasionally be driven nuts by throwaway lines like the claim that the commingling of objects, computing and information "enables a deeper, more intimate, more multiplex interaction between humans and objects"-- the sort of thing that's not essential to his argument, yet too broad-brush for someone with an historian's instincts to let pass without a sigh-- I won't be driven to distraction.

And Sterling's basic vision is intriguing:

 

The world of organized artifice is transforming in ways that are poorly understood and little explored. There are two reasons why this is happening.

First, new forms of design and manufacture are appearing that lack historical precedent.... Second, the production methods currently used are not sustainable....

So the challenge at hand is to creatively guide the tremendous vectors of the first reason, so as to finesse the horrific consequecnes of the second reason. Then we can enjoy some futurity. (7)

 

Sterling begins by defining some terms for different kinds of things, organized by fundamentals regarding their production, relations to humans, and level of intelligence:

• Artifacts are "simple artificial objects, made by hand, used by hand, and powered by muscle." (9)
• Machines are "complex, precisely proportioned artifacts with many integral moving parts that have tapped some non-human, non-animal power source." (9) Machines are used by customers.
• Products are "widely distributed, commercially available objects, anonymously and uniformly manufactured in massive quantities." (10) Products have consumers.
• Gizmos "are highly unstable, user-alterable, baroquely multifeatured objects, commonly programmable, with a brief lifespan." (11) Gizmos have End-Users, though "the older roles of buyer, seller, producer [and] developer are all melted down in the informational stew." (20)
• Spimes are "manufactured objects whose informational support is so overwhelmingly extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system." (11) Spimes have Wranglers. Spimes aren't prevalent yet, but they're coming. They'll pose challenges, but we can design around them; "the future can be yours to make." (13)

These aren't hard and fast categories: a bottle of wine, for example, combines elements of an artifact (the wine and vineyard), a machine (the technologies used to ferment and wine), a product (the bottle), and a gizmo (the label, bar code, and related Web site).

Every one of these transitions-- Artifact to Machine to Product to Gizmo-- involves an expansion of information. It enables a deeper, more intimate, more multiplex interaction between humans and artifacts.*

Like all gizmos, this wine has a short lifespan; lots of built-in functionality; an interface to a lot of information; and it presents consumers with potential problems of cognitive overload and opportunity costs.

More as I read along.

* (Hmmm. Is a musician's relationship with an electric version of an instrument "deeper, more intimate, [and] more multiplex" than the acoustic version? Would Yo-yo Ma really kick ass* if he gave up that unamplified wooden cello for an electric cello-- or a cello interface that controlled an all-electronic instrument? Did Glenn Gould get less out of the organ than Walter Carlos did with the Moog synthesizer? If that's what that line claims, it's obviously wrong. But in Sterling's defense, it's also a bit of a throwaway.)