John Thackara: In the Bubble. Designing in a Complex World (2005)
Filed under book | Tags: · design, information society, interaction design, internet, learning, smart mobs, technology, telerobotics
We’re filling up the world with technology and devices, but we’ve lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his new book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World.
These are tough questions for the pushers of technology to answer. Our economic system is centered on technology, so it would be no small matter if “tech” ceased to be an end-in-itself in our daily lives.
Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss the end it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communications, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected appliances that we’re unleashing upon the world. We need to ask what impact all this stuff will have on our daily lives. Who will look after it, and how?
In the Bubble is about a world based less on stuff and more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is taking place now—not in a remote science fiction future; it’s not about, as he puts it, “the schlock of the new” but about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. We are regaining respect for what people can do that technology can’t. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways. Many of these services involve technology—ranging from body implants to wide-bodied jets. But objects and systems play a supporting role in a people-centered world. The design focus is on services, not things. And new principles—above all, lightness—inform the way these services are designed and used. At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief, informed by a wealth of real-world examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding social and technical innovation.
Publisher MIT Press, 2005
ISBN 0262201577, 9780262201575
321 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-11-23)
Comment (0)Otto Von Busch, Karl Palmas: Abstract Hacktivism: The Making of a Hacker Culture (2006)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, design, hacktivism, innovation, politics, technology
In recent years, designers, activists and businesspeople have started to navigate their social worlds on the basis of concepts derived from the world of computers and new media technologies. According to Otto von Busch and Karl Palmas, this represents a fundamental cultural shift. The conceptual models of modern social thought, as well as the ones emanating from the 1968 revolts, are being usurped by a new worldview. Using thinkers such as Michel Serres, Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda as a point of departure, the authors expand upon the idea that everyday technologies are profoundly interconnected with dominant modes of thought.
In the nineteenth century, the motor replaced the clockwork as the universal model of knowledge. In a similar vein, new media technologies are currently replacing the motor as the dominant ‘conceptual technology’ of contemporary social thought. This development, von Busch and Palmas argue, has yielded new ways of construing politics, activism and innovation.
The authors embark on different routes to explore this shift. Otto von Busch relates the practice of hacking to phenomena such as shopdropping, craftivism, fan fiction, liberation theology, and Spanish social movement YOMANGO. Karl Palmas examines how publications like Adbusters Magazine, as well as business theorists, have adopted a computer-inspired worldview, linking this development to the dot.com boom of the late 1990s. Hence, the text is written for designers and activists, as well as for the general reader interested in cultural studies.
Publisher Openmute, 2006
London and Istanbul
ISBN 0955479622, 9780955479625
Length 132 pages
copyleft by the authors
Kostas Terzidis: Expressive Form: A Conceptual Approach to Computational Design (2003)
Filed under book | Tags: · algorithm, architecture, design
With the increased use of computers, architecture has found itself in the midst of a plethora of possible uses. This book combines theoretical enquiry with practical implementation offering a unique perspective on the use of computers related to architectural form and design. Notions of exaggeration, hybrid, kinetic, algorithmic, fold and warp are examined from different points of view: historical, mathematical, philosophical or critical. Generously illustrated, this book is a source of inspiration for students and professionals.
Publisher Taylor & Francis, 2003
ISBN 0415317436, 9780415317436
Length 90 pages