In his 2005 nonfiction book Shaping Things, the science-fiction novelist Bruce Sterling predicts the development of a technology he calls "spimes," which would, essentially, embed a story in every object and link all objects to each other. "Spimes have identities, they are protagonists of a documented process," writes Sterling. "They are searchable, like Google. You can think of Spimes as being auto-Googling objects." In the past few years, Sterling's prediction has come to life in the form of technologies like Stickybits and QRcode. In this video from the recent LIFT conference, Sterling assesses how his predictions and theories about Spimes have faired since the book's publication:
Bruce Sterling "Shaping Things" (Lift09 France EN) from Lift Conference on Vimeo.
Thanks, Erik and Boing Boing!
