Recently finished Bruce Sterlings Shaping Things (image of cover above left and contents page right) over a few lunch’s and train journeys (I’m a slow reader). The book is an example of one of those instances when you have a lot to say but just don’t quite know how to say it, here simply because of the recentness of the topic which Sterling is tackling and the fact that there isn’t the vocabulary. Of course this doesn’t stop Sterling in the slightest. His overwhelming enthusiasm for future technologies and his adept skill at inventing new terminology ad hoc easily make up for this slightly problematic scenario.

The premise for the book is clearly stated on the cover:

This book is about created objects and the environment, which is to say, it’s a book about everything.

This tackling ‘everything’ doesn’t help the ‘a lot to say but just don’t quite know how to say it’ scenario but we soon realise that everything is in fact every ‘thing’ and how these ‘things’ will be shaped in the future. Besides, as Sterling assures us:

Seen from sufficient distance, this is a small topic.

Sterling imagines a world in Shaping Things where every thing will be connected, networked with each other. A world where will be be able to know every thing in every detail, it’s constituent parts, it’s social-economic origins, it’s potential to be reused etc. He recognises that we may not want to know every thing but if we do, we can.

Among the technologies Sterling mentions he goes into great detail on RFID’s or Arphid’s as he calls them making himself sound as if he’s from the west country in England. RFID for Sterling is indicative of the type of short range and mobile networking technology which will enable an internet of things supporting what he calls our current Gizmo society and ultimately sometime in the future a Spime society.

I’m not sure I could, or indeed anyone could, have approached this enormous task with the enthusiasm Bruce Sterling has done. He manages to achieve what he sets out to do, to flesh out this very tricky and difficult topic, in under 150 pages.

If you haven’t read any of Bruce Sterlings musings on technology you could start with his keynote address from the 2006 O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference which I’ve posted here previously.