Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 05

Bruce Sterling

HANDS ON:

MAKING A MOBILE

STAYING POISED AT THE FERTILE EDGE OF CHAOS, WHILE THE CLOCK TICKS.

I’M IN RESIDENCY AT ART CENTER COLLEGE of Design in Pasadena, Calif., and it didn’t take me long to figure out that most everybody here makes stuff.

Here at design school, it’s a demo-or-die situation. For instance, everybody in my “Ecology of Things” class is busily making demos and prototypes for highly distributed, embeddable computer chips. These microchips are supplied to the students courtesy of the research and design wing of Sun Microsystems.

Since I’m an author and have spent my entire career blabbing, I decided my design students would surely benefit by seeing me build something myself.

The prospect of ubiquitous, ad-hoc’ed, ...