Enchanted Objects
Innovation, Design, and the Future of Technology
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- 16,99 €
Descripción editorial
In the tradition of Who Owns the Future, an MIT Media Lab scientist imagines how everyday objects can intuit our needs, improve our lives, and form “an ethereal interconnection of gadgets and human desires that...will pervade our lives in the very near future” (The Wall Street Journal).
We are now standing at the precipice of the next transformative development, a world in which technology becomes more human. Soon, connected technology will be embedded in hundreds of everyday objects we already use: our cars, wallets, watches, umbrellas, even our trash cans. These objects will respond to our needs, come to know us, and even learn to think ahead on our behalf. David Rose calls these devices—which are just beginning to creep into the marketplace—Enchanted Objects.
In Rose’s vision of the future, technology atomizes, combining itself with the objects that make up the very fabric of daily living. Such innovations will be woven into the background of our environment, enhancing human relationships, channeling desires for omniscience, long life, and creative expression. The enchanted objects of fairy tales and science fiction will enter real life.
Groundbreaking, timely, and provocative, Enchanted Objects is a “delightful” (The New York Times) blueprint for a better future, where efficient solutions come hand in hand with technology that delights our senses. It is essential reading for designers, technologists, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and anyone who wishes to take a glimpse into the future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
What innovations will allow us to minimize our reliance on screen based devices and instead inhabit a world seamlessly enmeshed with the wonderments of connected technology? This is the question that tech enterpriser and innovator Rose poses in his new book. Rose seeks to incorporate smart and intuitive technology into everyday objects in order to enchant our milieu, lives, selves, and fulfill our desire for magical objects. This impetus is exemplified in the author's own designs such as an umbrella whose handle glows when rain is forecasted, a prescription bottle lid that glows when you forget to take your medicine, or ambient globes that shift colors to indicate changes in internet data sets. Rose's optimism occasionally blinds him to the drawbacks of his futuristic dreams such as a trash can that gleans marketing information and automatically reorders discarded items, or a tooth that clamps your jaw shut to interrupt unhealthy eating habits, or cameras with visual recognition that identifies strangers. This uncritical stance towards potential pernicious repercussions, coupled with Rose's overt self-promotion compromise the book. If the future is to be inevitably inundated with new technology, Rose creatively re-envisions what forms this will take. If you are as enamored with the possibility of a technologically enchanted life, these niggling concerns will surely not dampen your enjoyment of Rose's imagination, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
