Shaping Things

by Bruce Sterling, Lorraine Wild (Designer)

A guide to the next great wave of technology--an era of objects so programmable that they can be regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system. Shaping Things is about created objects and the environment, which is to say, it's about 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 hilarious history of shaped things. We have moved from an age of artifacts, made by hand, through complex machines, to the current era of gizmos. New forms of design and manufacture are appearing that lack historical precedent, he writes; but the production methods, using archaic forms of energy and materials 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, baroquely multi-featured, and programmable, that will be sustainable, enhanceable, and uniquely identifiable. Sterling coins the term spime for them, these future-manufactured objects with informational support so extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system. Spimes are designed on screens, fabricated by digital means, and precisely tracked through space and time. They are made of substances that can be folded back into the production stream of future spimes, challenging all of us to become involved in their production. Spimes are coming, says Sterling. We will need these objects in order to live; we won't be able to surrender their advantages without awful consequences.

The vision of Shaping Things is given material form by the intricate design of Lorraine Wild. Shaping Things is for designers and thinkers, engineers and scientists, entrepreneurs and financiers; and anyone who wants to understand and be part of the process of technosocial transformation.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Technology, Futurism, Engineering, Internet, Reference

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Bruce Sterling is an author, journalist, critic and a contributing editor of Wired magazine. Best known for his ten science fiction novels, he also writes short stories, book reviews, design criticism, opinion columns and introductions to books by authors ranging from Ernst Jünger to Jules Verne. His non-fiction works include The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier (1992), Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years (2003) and Shaping Things (2005).

Reviews

[Margot DeMarco · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is in parts a fascinating read on the way our interactions and objects will be radically different in the extremely near future. It is also, however, extremely annoying, condescending and dated.

[Tim Belonax · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful marriage of form and writing that still holds weight over ten years after its writing (which is impressive for technology writing).

I'd recommend this book to anyone entering digital product design or those interested in technology and its interplay with society.

Some of Sterling's language can feel obfuscated by his style, but writing clearly about a future yet to happen can be a complicated endeavor.

[Frank Caron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting if obtuse read about a projection of what the future holds beyond our current era of software gizmos and end-usership. Sonewhat heavy-handed and neologism-laden, Sterling’s missive did give me an interesting eureka parallel to my work which I’ll be writing about soon, so in that respect it was neat, but otherwise, it’s a bit too cool for school for my tastes, like the nerd at your cafeteria lunch who condescends to you about Magic cards.

[Florin Pitea · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok.

[Wendy White · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's both a credit to Sterling and a somewhat nervous realisation that this book is still so relevant over a decade later. Sterling is prescient, thoughtful, and I really, really hope that the ideas in this book are somehow permeating into the brains of the technocultural elite that have so much power around the shaping of our future.

The beginning and end are definitely the most interesting parts, you might lose focus towards the middle as Sterling expands on his initial ideas, but it really is worth going through the entire journey to the end of the book.

If you're interested in design, psychology, technology and where it intersects with culture, this is worth a read - yes, even now. I feel it's really worth emphasising something Sterling only comments on in his final chapters - why understanding the design and evolution of technology and culture is so important: because it is an inextricable element required for the continued growth and survival of humanity as a species. I'm sure Sterling didn't want to sound too grandiose and that's probably partially why that particular idea is only really the direct focus of a couple pages towards the end of the book, but they really, really hit home with me.

Sterling describing what we want to avoid as a society:

'What we really ought to fear is not 'Oblivion' but irretrievable decline. That would be a grim situation in which we all knew humanity's best days were behind us, and that none of our efforts, however brilliant or sincere, could redress the mistakes humankind has already committed. Hope has died within us as a species; our hearts are broken; animal vitality keeps us on our feet, but the only satisfaction lies in inflicting harm on ourselves and others.'

This paragraph really seized me by my soul. I have always clung to the dream that humanity's endless hope, ingenuity and curiosity leads us to great new ideas, worlds, and ways of being, now and in the future. So what Sterling describes above is one of my deepest fears.

He isn't just scaremongering. The entire book is, in part, Sterling thinking about how to avoid such a hopeless world. This section, for example:

'We need to understand that we really don't want to find ourselves in a world that fits that description.

And in order to avoid that fate, we need to work. We need to tear into the world of artifice in the same way our ancestors tore into the natural world. We need to rip root and branch into the previous industrial base and re-invent it, re-build it. While we have the good fortune to be living, we should invent and apply ways of life that expand the options of our descendants rather than causing irreparable damage to their heritage.'

After this he outlines some of the areas we most need to consider to continue to grow and seize hope as a technosocial society.

I still have hope, even as I'm terrified of the signs of humanity's growing collective depression. We all need to work together, in our own ways, to build on the great things we possess as humans - that ingenuity, that empathy, that curiosity, that hope - so that the future is a bright one.

That's my deepest wish, for all of us. And I'm glad there's a book like this out there, doing its best to help point the way.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hadn't reread "Shaping Things" since starting to write book reviews, but this year felt like the right time to revisit this old favorite.

"Shaping Things" was a very influential book on me when I first read it, which was in the years it came out. Of course, it's now hard to separate it from the other books, blog posts, and conference videos in that overall constellation of what Bruce Sterling and others in that overlapping design and foresight community were doing at that time, but it now has a kind of centrality, and still sits comfortably in my overall mental furniture. I'll find myself thinking or saying a chunk of it, now firmly part of my own thoughts.

I would say that book provoked me into some relatively major life decisions. I drafted a paper on potential APIs for the world it described and it's arguable that this work was one that led to me to go to graduate school. It is surprising that this book looms so large, given that it is so small (though rather quite large for a pamphlet, as it calls itself).

"Shaping Things" is a celebration of design, particularly industrial design, and a vision of what it has been and could yet be. It describes how our best designers continually negotiate with social change by producing work that embodies Raymond Lowey's "Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable" dictum, and tugs us forward on that continuum with the appeal of glamour.

The design vision it puts forth is a world that reverses what is permanent between design descriptions and produced objects, so that the design is permanently indexed, assessed, and archived in the context of a broader set of potential objects, while the designed objects themselves are tracked through their service and then disassembled. The specifics of this vision have wonderfully mundane over-specificity that could seem dated now but felt weirdly already-dated then (a RFID-laden, fabricator-encrusted world tracking objects in indexed CAD files through cradle-to-cradle cycles).

However, an additional interesting aspect about this vision is its edges; we're not even supposed to be living in it for some time, and what's slated to come after that is a world of designed biotechnology. It feels like with CRISPR and agro-ecological urbanism and who knows what all (and maybe a climate change that's arriving a little earlier) that it missed the trick of the natural already being part of the design world.

But then again, it's hard to say; maybe, for many people, this is still the right pamphlet to blow their mind. Maybe give it a try and see.

[Christian · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.[return][return]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. 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. [return][return]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.

[Michael Annor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very fascinating read. To think it was written in 2005. Sterling makes interesting observations about the past and the present and piques our interests into the technosocial. Every “thing” has an effect, long after it’s intended use. Most importantly, Sterling emphasises the need for sustainable thinking and in a not so alarmist way, highlights the frightening future we’re heading towards.

His writing style is animated and largely excludes non-western ideas, technology, innovation and trends.

But overall, it’s a book I wish I read 10 years ago, and 5 years ago. And definitely some time in the future.

[Kirstine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book as part of the research for my master's thesis. The first 70 pages were the most interesting to me, the rest (with the exception of the last chapters) were a bit of a drag. It's not long though and I would recommend it if you have an interest in technology and/or sustainability.

[Tova · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is fundamentally about sticking RFID tags, or more advanced chips, on objects to make them traceable through their lifetime. Along with how that could expand in the future with more data attached to objects along with 3D printing that could allow the quick creation and recycling of objects.

That's a neat enough idea, but the book wraps it all up in a metric ton of completely unnecessary made up vocabulary. At the same time it also fails at painting a coherent picture of what all this would actually be good for, the little bits on sustainability aren't terribly convincing, as those seem to be much easier accomplished by other means.

So overall, there is a core of an interesting idea here, but the book does a terrible job at communicating it clearly, while also being rather unimaginative with the potential of the wider implications of "Internet of Things"-like technology.

[Bruno Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, Bruce Sterling introduces an intriguing concept called "design fiction," which he explores throughout the book. Sterling effectively conveys his vision of a future where design merges with storytelling to shape our world. Through design fiction, he invites readers to consider the profound impact of technology on society, encouraging us to imagine potential futures and question the ethical and cultural implications of our design choices. Sterling's unique blend of design thinking and speculative fiction offers a thought-provoking and imaginative perspective on the role of design in shaping our collective future. That's excellent thinking. I liked it
Plus: it's swift to read.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some selected chapters were assigned as reading for an ethics class. I thought it was interesting so I went ahead and read the rest of it, and I did not enjoy it. I did finish more than half of it, so I'll won't shelve it as unfinished.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unextraordinary, but full of vocabulary that helps to prepare you to think about the future and how to perceive the paradigm shifts to come.

[Iamreddave · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Environmental, visionary, entertaining. IOT described 14 years ago but with a great vision for how it will evolve

[Magistr · Rating 4 out of 5]

old book, about now and future, provides a few insights into how things are working now and shaped

[Caner Ufuk (Dekreus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but annoying neologism

[Diamond · Rating 4 out of 5]

This guy is a genius.

Does that mean I agree with everything he says? Absolutely not. But damn, really was a cool read (esp for a class reading...)

[Tao · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Sterling proposes a very interesting idea that objects can remember its own journey of life. Some inspiring or thoughtful quotes are:

"Why do we want to make this effort? It's because a metahistory is the ultimate determinant of the shape of things. It's through metahistory that people come to realize that new things are proper things. New objects that can fit into a metahistorical context are seen as progressive advancements." -- p. 39

"They have the capacity to change the human relationship to time and material processes, by making those processes blatant and archiveable." -- p. 43

"A SYNCHRONIC SOCIETY synchronizes multiple histories. In a SYNCHRONIC SOCIETY, every object worthy of human or machine consideration generates a small history. These histories are not dusty archives locked away on ink and paper. They are informational resources, manipulable in real time." -- p. 45

"Generating new knowledge is very good, but in a world with superb archives, accessing knowledge that you didn't know you possessed is both faster and more reliable than discovering it." -- p. 47

"A SYNCHRONIC SOCIETY has a temporalistic sensibility rather than a materialistic one." -- p. 49

"Thanks to improved capacities of instrumentation, things are no longer perceived as static--they move along a clocked trajectory from nonexistence to post-existence." -- p. 50

"Trash is always our premier cultural export to the future." -- p. 58

"But suppose I show them how the object came to be, and I link that information to the object. That would be 'transparent production.'" -- p. 73

"The data it generated remains available for historical analysis by a wide variety of interested parties… The SPIME is a set of relationships first and always, and an object now and then." -- p. 77

"A SPIME is, by definition, the protagonist of a documented process. It is an historical entity with an accessible, precise trajectory through space and time." -- p. 77

"In a SPIME, value transmutes into a public interaction with past and future. It's not about the material object, but where it came from, where it is, how long it stays there, when it goes away, and what comes next. And just how long this can go on. Every market is a futures market.
Really? Yes. Consider your credit history. Your insurance. Your retirement funds." -- p. 109

"You want to know the identity of the early adapters, alpha geeks and stakeholders." -- p. 126

"It's a fully documented, trackable, searchable technology."

[Alex]

Much like Bruno Latour, Bruce Sterling understands that neither sociology nor technology can be discussed as separate topics. There are even parallels in the way that Sterling personifies technology in his writing to Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory.

Technology acts upon society while society acts upon technology at the same time. He describes this system as "socio-technical". He lists off the 4 different ages of technosociety leading to the present day (Gizmos and End-Users) before going off into detail about his envisioned technosociety of the future (Splime and Wranglers).

This exploration of technosociety done through design fiction leads to interesting revelations about the role of Designers as well as the future. This ranges from understanding how information is critical (He discusses it through the lenses of cognitive load and opportunity to cost which reminds me of Tristan Harris' work on the attention economy) as well as sustainability and economics. Many of the way he discusses Design is made possible because he is not a Designer himself and the perspective he is able to have with it.

I appreciated the book a lot, but I do admit to getting lost at times with his style of writing, new vocabulary, and just abstract nature of writing about the future. He does provide a sense of humor that is rarely found in Design books.

[James Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I just sat down and read this book in one sitting. Formally it is described as a "pamphlet," but how many pamphlets run on to 150 pages? I will make no secret of being a fan of Mr. Sterlings scifi work, but this is non-fiction that invites us into the world of a scifi like future. To quote liberally from the cover:
"This book is about created objects and the environment, which is to say, it's a book about everything.
The ideal readers for this book are those ambitious young souls (of any age) who want to constructively intervene in the process of technosocial transformation. That is to say, this book is for designers and thinkers, engineers and scientists, entrepreneurs and financiers, and anyone else who might care to understand why things were once as they were, why things are as they are, and what things seem to be becoming."
This book is all that and more, in that it offers real solutions and dreamably real solutions to the crisis we have gotten ourselves and our planet into. It is a page turner just as much as his scifi novels can be. It is a fascinating look into metahistory and into thinking about thinking.
Actually, it is a book beyond the insult of a brief review. If you care about the present and the future, read this book.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

One disappointment I encountered--not quite a demerit--is that I'd really hoped Sterling would breathe a sci-fi writer's imagination into the topic, but it was on par with a Vint Cerf YouTube presentation (which would be a fair substitute for this book if you prefer--also, Cerf's "IP on Everything" T-shirt is much funnier than any of Sterling's humor). The book's continuing plus is that it's a short read, and even if you find it dull or passé, you'll have it finished before you can really hate it too much. Also, I didn't find that the book's flashy and integrated graphic design particularly added much to the message, but nor did it distract from the content.

Only three stars because in 2010 Sterling's ideas require a bit more flesh than what he provided here in 2005. Not that this isn't still fresh and inspiring--it's still a prognostication of things to come--but five years later we're much closer to that future date and should expect a little more depth.

Along those lines, can anyone recommend a more current work on similar topics? Something fairly layman oriented...

[Olaf Kowalik · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is easier to read if you've seen Sterling talk about spimes. There are a couple of his talks on YouTube that give context. The upshot of the book is his vision of a technology called spimes which, by nature of their ability to track themselves and be recycled, are environmentally sustainable. He describes a set of technologies including digital fabrication and RFID that contribute to the goal of sustainability. His other point in the book is that designers are uniquely able to create this future of self-aware and self-managing objects that do not harm the planet as they are manufactured and decommissioned. The book includes a history of objects--from artifacts, to machines, to gizmos, to spimes, to biots (some form of biological machine that can be engineered). He's a stream-of-conscious writer so you have to go with the flow on this book. If you're familiar with the various technologies he identifies, there isn't much new here, but if you keep his ultimate goal of sustainability in mind, it's an interesting vision to consider.

[DWRL Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sterling offers a historical overview of “things,” a history, he says, that’s moved from more sustainable methods (in the age of handmade objects) to the unsustainable age of “gizmos” where we find ourselves today, and into the future of design. He argues that the next phase, or technoculture, we will enter will be an age of more sustainable “spimes,” which he characterizes as primarily virtual objects (information-based) that will materialize physically when necessary. Anyone interested in digital media or design will find this book useful for its insight into the past and future relationships physical and virtual objects (and objects’ relationship to information) as well as the vocabulary Sterling offers for talking about that future. Those interested in textual studies might find Lorraine Wild’s integration of digital textual and navigation elements into the printed text worth a look.

[Joe Milazzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

More a manifesto that it might initial appear to be (it does take a while for Sterling to get to just what a spime *is*), Sterling here proposes a reification of informatics so radical it just might alter the infrastructure of our consumptiveness.

I wonder what might happen if Sterling were to put science fiction aside for a while and concentrate on something a bit less "generic".

The design of the book is crucial to the meaning it aims to make, and, while it might not be for every taste -- some might find it a bit cute -- there's no denying its intelligence.

[Yates Buckley · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Patadave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really, a design manifesto. Sterling sees the world unlike anyone else. His insight into design in this work completely changed the way I thought about environmentalism and the green movement.

Sterling's fiction can often be clunky and his characters awkward and wooden. He's at his best in a work like this where he's allowed to spin out future scenarios firmly rooted in a comprehensive grasp of the present.

The design of this book, appropriately, is also magnificent.

[Shannon Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read even if it is a bit old - still paints a picture of a future that is rapidly approaching but not quite yet here. Worth reading if you are thinking about how 3D printing or more precisely personal Fabrication will change the future. But it isn't just about that, it is also a great example of a Futurist having fun - yet also painting a picture of a realistic and possible future. Not a perfect book in the least with a lot of neologisms (most of which haven't caught on - yet)

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bruce Stirling's notions of the evolution of designed objects from Artifacts to Machines to Products to Gizmos to "Spimes" is an insightful and fascinating journey between our past and possible future, particularly significant is the idea that our designed objects will need to become rich with metadata and that this has within it the potential clues to sustainable design.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sterling isn't just an amazing Sci-Fi writer, he's also a futurist, and this is the pure stuff; pontifications on where we're headed based on where we've been and where we are.

If you want to take peek at the coming "Internet of Things" then give this book a read.

[Hendrik · Rating 4 out of 5]

The illustration of the book is quite lovely, the projections not too far off the mark yet, but as he recently said in a conference talk, the whole rfid-as-panacea-enabler might never happen, that it's just too difficult to give each item all this contextual information.

Still, interesting read.