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).