When Things Start to Think
Integrating Digital Technology into the Fabric of Our Lives
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Descripción editorial
In When Things Start to Think, Neil Gershenfeld tells the story of his Things that Think group at MIT's Media Lab, the group of innovative scientists and researchers dedicated to integrating digital technology into the fabric of our lives.
Gershenfeld offers a glimpse at the brave new post-computerized world, where microchips work for us instead of against us. He argues that we waste the potential of the microchip when we confine it to a box on our desk: the real electronic revolution will come when computers have all but disappeared into the walls around us. Imagine a digital book that looks like a traditional book printed on paper and is pleasant to read in bed but has all the mutability of a screen display. How about a personal fabricator that can organize digitized atoms into anything you want, or a musical keyboard that can be woven into a denim jacket?
When Things Start to Think is a book for people who want to know what the future is going to look like, and for people who want to know how to create the future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At MIT's Media Lab, the researchers and students already live in the future. Gershenfeld, director of the Physics and Media Group and co-director of the Things That Think consortium at the Media Lab, offers a user-friendly tour of that present future. There, "smart paper" is recycled by your printer and the coffee pot recognizes your cup and serves up your preference. Gershenfeld's sympathies are with those who feel they are the servants of computers rather than the other way around. His answer to a recent report of a man who shot his crashed PC (four times in the hard drive and once in the monitor) is to give computers the ability to sense and respond to their environments. At a recent fashion show, he reports, MIT grad students modeled jackets outfitted with very personal computers that are powered by natural movement and can play music, or change the appearance of the fabric from solid to pinstripe. So why do the rest of us have to settle for staring at the screens of our blind, dumb and deaf PCs? Gershenfeld makes a strong case that compartmentalization and secrecy in education, research and industry has brought us to an impasse that can be overcome only by creative chaos and openness. Especially for techno-phobes, Gershenfeld's easy style and light use of technical terms makes his book a fun and tantalizing glimpse into the world to come. Illustrations.
