Bruce Sterling on Downloadable Designs
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 09.28.07
Bruce Sterling has not only written the book on downloadable designs (called Shaping Things), He made the movie too!
According to Putting People First", 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.
Last night Sterling showed an amazing video in Italy; you can see it ::Here See also our site ::In An Absolut World Everything is Downloadable
I hadn't realised how much of a treehugger Bruce Sterling was until I attended the talk on Thursday. I think his idea that manufacturing needs to become sustainable and feed end-of-life products back in at the start of the manufacturing stream is more important than his take on downloadable designs.
I've expanded on this in my review of Bruce's talk in Turin.