Title: Shaping Things
Author(s): Bruce Sterling
ISBN: 9780262693264
Read: November 2008
Summary

Interesting bits

Artifacts – Machines – Products – Gizmos – Spime

Line of no Return: we cannot voluntarily return to a previous technoculture condition.

Line of Empire: those who lack the means or capacity to evolve in the new technoculture are force into colonial or defensive postures.

There is more than them monetary metric: cognitive load (pay attention to things) and opportunity cost (have to sacrifice something to support another something) are also present in the gizmos technoculture.

Everyone can’t be a designer, Design is not science

Metahistory is important so we can learn from it more effectively.

The ability to make many small mistakes in a hurry is a vital accomplishment for any society that intends to be sustainable. [p.47] Rapid prototyping is important: “mistakes” become a source of wealth.

The rubbish maker and “obsolesence is innovation in reverse” (mirrored double S-curve)

MAYA from Raymond Loewy: Most Advanced, Yet Accpetable

A SPIME is, by definition, the protagonist of a documented process. It is an historical entity with an accessible, precise trajectory through space and time. [p.77]

He traces the history of marking stuff, from barcodes to RFID, to SPIME, to SPIME monitors, connected/GPS enabled => An Internet of Things

A WRANGLER is someone who can manage and distille the information space of SPIMEs.

I can’t possibly waste my time trying to tell the Internet what’s handy for me. I want a world that’s auto-Googling [p. 100-101]

The model is the message, Fabbing is to become important, crowd sourcing, public onlookers provide information and knowledge at the fringes of current product/service commercial spaces.

SPIME is all about timescale and the traceable knowledge encompassed with it.

People can’t outguess themselves through planning. Their needs, and desires and wishes defy prediction, for they are hierarchical, nonlinear, time-bound and inherently conflicted.

A successful human lifespan is a homeostatic tumbling with enough flexibility to allow effective action, but enough continuity to avert terrifying chaos. [p. 140] Ublopia vs Otivion

One three basic kinds of “technology” are truly worthy of civilized use.
-technology that can rot and go away all by itself
-technology that is monumental (monument that last multi-generations, timeless pieces)
-technology that is fully documented, trackable, searchable technology.

Title: The Craftsman
Author(s): Richard Sennett
ISBN: 780300119091
Read: September 2008 

Summary

Interesting bits

What is craftsmanship?
Achieving quality, on doing good work.

From Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition
Animal Laborens, the work as an end in itself. How?
Animal Faber, “man as maker”, Why?

Not so clear distinction as engagement and materialism is much more complex [p. 7]

Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake. [p.9] What is good enough and done well (conflicting standards)?

An intimate connection between hand and head [p.9]

Workshops where knowledge is made and shared (unequally). A recipe for binding people tightly together [p. 80]. It started from religion and ritual, now a site of unresolvable conflict between autonomy and authority.

The development of skill:
-all the skills begin with bodily practices
-technical understanding develops through the powers of imagination (imperfect or incomplete tools force you to repair and improvise).

Motivation matters more than talent.

Craftsmanship is both problem-solving and problem-finding (simultaneously). “Fit-for-purpose” procedures or tools [p. 160]

It takes 10 000 hours to become expert in any fields (musician, carpenter, etc.) [p. 20], 3 hours a day, for ten years, Daniel Levitin [p. 172]

Emotional rewards are twofold: people are anchored in tangible reality and people take pride in their work. Culturally neglected in western society, technical less valued than intellectual activities (fractured skills, hand and head divided)

Industrial Revolution vs Craftsmanship: machines bring more power to people but often a cost of relational understanding [p. 43], over determination, we should aim at embodied knowledge, improvising in the reality with the current world as we experience it.

Higher stages of skill: constant interplay of tacit knowledge and critique/corrective measures.

Machines: friendly tool or enemy replacing the human hand? [p. 81]
A mirror tool: replicants (do the same thing as human) or robots (enlarged capacities), or mixture of the two (i.e. Diderot’s Encyclopedia description of glassblowing)

Material consciousness: people invest thought in things they change [p. 120]
-Metamorphosis, change in procedure
-Presence, leaving marks
-Anthropomorphosis, impute human qualities to raw material
Immanuel Kant: “The hand is the window to the mind” [p. 149]

Hand and bodily skill: prehension, hand virtues, coordination/cooperation, minimum force, hand and eye relation, etc.

Getting better at using tools, by necessity, when they challenge us.
Arousing tools, difficult tools , making repairs, intuitive leaps (does not generally fit the pattern of deductive syllogistic thinking) [p. 213]

Resistance and ambiguity.

Craftsmanship: Quality-driven work
Expertise, the social (can explain, mentor) and anti-social ways (closed, invidious comparison)
Managing obsession.
Vocation.

Ability, work and play