1) In the article "Between a Blob + a Hard Place" Steven Skov Holt & Mara Holt Skov argue in the File InCA_Spring05.pdf (on page 20) that the 'blobject' phenomenon really took off in the ID (industrial design) profession in the 1990s. Why?
• According to the passage, Steven and Mara states, “a time marking the beginning of a particularly critical period in the ID profession, a time when the bits and bytes of computer-aided technologies magically flowed together in the service of a new liquid vision. Though designers had always wanted to achieve curvaceous forms the explosion of blobjects is most accredited to the increasing power of CAD, modeling techniques, the development of new materials, production methods and rapid prototyping".
2) Which year in the 1990s was a watershed?
• In the 1998 was a watershed year for Blobjects.
3) What three other products were introduced this year that were good examples of blobjects?
• 1. New VW Beetle
• 2. “Five Flavor” Apple iMacs
• 3. Nike introduced the Triax watch
4) On page 29 of "Shaping Things" Bruce Sterling describes when a 'gizmo' becomes a 'spime'. Copy the sentence here.
• “When the entire industrial process is made explicit, when the metrics count for more than the object they measure, then gismo become spimes.”
5) On page 45 of "Shaping Things" Bruce Sterling describes a defining characteristic of a Synchronic Society. Quote him here.
• “A synchronic society generates trillions of catalogable, searchable, trackable trajectories: patterns of design, manufacturing, distribution and recycling that are maintained in fine-grained detail.”