In the Bubble - Annotated by John Thackara (Paperback)

About the Book

How to design a world in which we rely less on stuff, and more on people.

Book Synopsis

How to design a world in which we rely less on stuff, and more on people.

We're filling up the world with technology and devices, but we've lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his new book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World. These are tough questions for the pushers of technology to answer. Our economic system is centered on technology, so it would be no small matter if "tech" ceased to be an end-in-itself in our daily lives. Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss the end it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communications, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected appliances that we're unleashing upon the world. We need to ask what impact all this stuff will have on our daily lives. Who will look after it, and how?

In the Bubble is about a world based less on stuff and more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is taking place now--not in a remote science fiction future; it's not about, as he puts it, "the schlock of the new" but about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. We are regaining respect for what people can do that technology can't. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways. Many of these services involve technology--ranging from body implants to wide-bodied jets. But objects and systems play a supporting role in a people-centered world. The design focus is on services, not things. And new principles--above all, lightness--inform the way these services are designed and used. At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief, informed by a wealth of real-world examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding social and technical innovation.

Review Quotes

In the Bubble is often delightful, stimulating, and surprising. Thackara may well emerge as a visionary voice for the wired era. For planners, designers, and anyone with an interest in the future, this book is a rich resource of inspiration, ideas, and guiding principles as well as sharply observed cautionary tales. It suggests that what the tech revolution most needs, and may already be moving toward, is a sense of purpose.--Bill S. Kowinski, San Francisco Chronicle--

Thackara has built an intricate and compelling case for the continuing impact of local action in a networked world...I hope he's right.

--I.D. Magazine--

An excellent new book...so push aside that colorful pile of photo-packed publications and pick up In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World, in whose pages 'design' is understood to be more about process than product, more about systems and services than about surfaces and packages, more about work to do than things to buy.

--ArtsJournal.com--

Thackara leaps nimbly from statistics to observations to anecdotes, from past to present to future, from energy to the environment, from the Burning Man Festival in Arizona to the Bombay Lunch Delivery program.

--Architectural Record--

If you've ever found yourself saying, 'bad TiVO, ' design critic John Thackara is talking to you.

--Fast Company--

About the Author

John Thackara, described as a "design guru, critic and business provocateur" by Fast Company, is the Director of Doors of Perception, a design futures network based in Amsterdam and Bangalore. He is the author of Design after Modernism, Lost in Space: A Traveler's Tale, Winners! How Successful Companies Innovate by Design, and other books. Since 2002, he has authored the Doors of Perception blog and newsletter (http: //www.doorsofperception.com/).