I strongly recommend Shaping Things from The MIT Press where Bruce Sterling takes us through a thought provoking journey from “artifact” to “biot” making us realize that we are no longer consumers but “end-users” living in a “gizmo” society and that our “gizmos” are “highly unstable, user-alterable, baroquely multi-featured objects, commonly programmable, with a brief life-span”.

If you want to gain insight about a designers role in a techonosociety and how networked technologies like RFID’s are going to influence the way we think of design, you must read this book.

I first came across author Bruce Sterling at the 1999 IDSA conference in Chicago where he got up on the podium and introduced himself as a futurist and began speaking in a Bucky Fuller style techno-design language. At that moment, I thought that had to be the coolest job in existence… until I figured out that it was just another name for a science fiction writer.

Either way Bruce is much more than that, he admits having zero design talent but understands the design process better than most design professionals, not only is he a respected design critic but also one of the most influential instigators of the bright green design movement. See Viridian Design.

Bruce suggest that design is the only discipline that consciously thinks of not only the objects but more importantly their technosocial relationships with the end-users which can take a heavy toll on an individuals cognitive load (dedicated brain RAM) and opportunity cost (time required to interact).

He also argues that although design is not science, design thinking is a much more appropriate process in writing science fiction resulting in a sort of design fiction. To me this sounds a lot like conceptualizing with just words (instead of sketches and prototypes). Here is an excerpt:

“Designers brainstorm. It’s not reasonable to brainstorm. A brainstorm works anyway, because the point of brainstorming is escaping “reasonable” constraints. A brainstorming session fails if it remains to reasonable. Brainstorms are about generating fresh, effective ideas from outside some particular paradigm.”

Bruce served a stint as “visionary in residence” at Art Center College of Design and also writes a blog for Wired called Beyond the Beyond and a great periodic commentary newsletter “the viridian list” that many bright greens subscribe to. If you wish to get on the list, you need to drop Bruce an email.