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Design for the Networked
World: A Practice for the
Twenty-First Century
MATT NISH-LAPIDUS
The Future of Design
Bruce Sterling wrote in Shaping Things (MIT Press) that the world is
becoming increasingly connected, and the devices by which we are con-
necting are becoming smarter and more self-aware. When every object
in our environment contains data collection, communication, and
interactive technology, how do we as human beings learn how to navi-
gate all of this new information? We need new tools as both designers,
and humans, to work with all of this information and the new devices
that create, consume, and store it.
Today, there’s a good chance that your car can park itself. Your phone
likely knows where you are. You can walk through the interiors of
famous buildings on the Web. Everything around us is constantly col-
lecting data, running algorithms, calculating outcomes, and accumu-
lating more raw data than we can handle.
We all carry minicomputers in our pockets, often more than one; pub-
lic and private infrastructure collects terabytes of data every minute;
and personal analytics has become so commonplace that it’s more con-
spicuous to not collect data about yourself than to record every waking
moment. In many ways we’ve moved beyond Malcolm McCullough’s
ideas of ubiquitous computing put forth in Digital Ground (MIT Press)
and into a world in which computing isn’t only ubiquitous and invisi-
ble, but pervasive, constant, and deeply embedded in our everyday lives.