I'm taking an interesting class this semester, called Haptic Action (hapticaction.blogspot.com).
It's the first time I'm taking a course in the School of Architecture. I'm loving it! I'll probably write more about it sometime soon, but for today, I want to write about the book we were assigned. It's called Shaping Things, by Bruce Sterling.
I only needed to get through the first 2 lines to realize that I'm going to be spending hours pondering over every topic the author talks about.
The book is about everything. The author talks about how things evolved over time. He classifies them as Artifacts, Machines, Products, Gizmos and Spimes. Artifacts were the first man-made objects, that were meant to be used by hand, and were powered by muscle. The people who used artifacts were hunters and farmers. Machines were the next stage in the evolution of things. These were complex, powered objects with many moving parts. People who interacted with machines were called Customers. Then Products were manufactured, and used by Consumers. And then came the age of Gizmos, which brought with them a connected network filled with all kinds of information. The people who used Gizmos were termed End Users. The author says that soon, we will enter the age of Spimes. These are objects that start and end as data, objects that are essentially 'material instantiations of an immaterial system'.
The author discusses how the evolution of things has affected the way humans live. He says that the different time periods are separated by what he calls the Line of No Return, and the Line of Empire.
The point of this post is not to give you an overview of the book.
It is to talk about the Line of No Return.
It is something that has been on my mind for a while now. A dear friend of mine once mentioned that he didn't mind being tech-savvy because he didn't want to be dependent on technology. I found this strange from the get-go. And the author of this book hit the nail on the head. If we cross the line of no return from the gizmo era to the machine era, it would lead to the collapse of the technosociety.
To put it simply, we humans come to depend on the things that we make.
We invented the wheel. We built roads. We built vehicles. We depend on them to travel.
We invented paper. We made ink. We made pens. We depend on them to express ourselves in writing.
We invented the telephone. We invented wireless technology. We made cell phones. We depend on them to keep in touch with each other.
We invented transistors. We fabricated ICs. We built computers. We invented the internet. We depend on it for almost all of our work now.
My point is, dependency on technology is natural. It is following the same path that our forefathers took when they became dependent on the 'things' that they lived with. It is human nature. We can't fight it.
In fact, we shouldn't! If we need to keep up with the rest of the world and the rest of our species, we need to adopt the 'things' of our age.
It's the first time I'm taking a course in the School of Architecture. I'm loving it! I'll probably write more about it sometime soon, but for today, I want to write about the book we were assigned. It's called Shaping Things, by Bruce Sterling.
I only needed to get through the first 2 lines to realize that I'm going to be spending hours pondering over every topic the author talks about.
The book is about everything. The author talks about how things evolved over time. He classifies them as Artifacts, Machines, Products, Gizmos and Spimes. Artifacts were the first man-made objects, that were meant to be used by hand, and were powered by muscle. The people who used artifacts were hunters and farmers. Machines were the next stage in the evolution of things. These were complex, powered objects with many moving parts. People who interacted with machines were called Customers. Then Products were manufactured, and used by Consumers. And then came the age of Gizmos, which brought with them a connected network filled with all kinds of information. The people who used Gizmos were termed End Users. The author says that soon, we will enter the age of Spimes. These are objects that start and end as data, objects that are essentially 'material instantiations of an immaterial system'.
The author discusses how the evolution of things has affected the way humans live. He says that the different time periods are separated by what he calls the Line of No Return, and the Line of Empire.
The point of this post is not to give you an overview of the book.
It is to talk about the Line of No Return.
It is something that has been on my mind for a while now. A dear friend of mine once mentioned that he didn't mind being tech-savvy because he didn't want to be dependent on technology. I found this strange from the get-go. And the author of this book hit the nail on the head. If we cross the line of no return from the gizmo era to the machine era, it would lead to the collapse of the technosociety.
To put it simply, we humans come to depend on the things that we make.
We invented the wheel. We built roads. We built vehicles. We depend on them to travel.
We invented paper. We made ink. We made pens. We depend on them to express ourselves in writing.
We invented the telephone. We invented wireless technology. We made cell phones. We depend on them to keep in touch with each other.
We invented transistors. We fabricated ICs. We built computers. We invented the internet. We depend on it for almost all of our work now.
My point is, dependency on technology is natural. It is following the same path that our forefathers took when they became dependent on the 'things' that they lived with. It is human nature. We can't fight it.
In fact, we shouldn't! If we need to keep up with the rest of the world and the rest of our species, we need to adopt the 'things' of our age.
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