In the past few decades, individuals have experienced dramatic changes in some of the most established dimensions of human life: time, space, matter, and individuality. Minds today must be able to synthesize such transformations, whether they are working across several time zones, travelling between satellite maps and nanoscale images, drowning in information, or acting fast in order to preserve some slow downtime. Design and the Elastic Mind focuses on designers ability to grasp momentous advances in technology, science and social mores and convert them into useful objects and systems. The projects included range from nanodevices to vehicles, appliances to interfaces and building facades, pragmatic solutions for everyday use to provocative ideas meant to influence our future choices. Designed by award-winning book designer Irma Boom, this volume also features essays by Paola Antonelli; design critic and historian Hugh Aldersey- Williams; visualization design expert Peter Hall; and nanophysicist Ted Sargent that further explore the promising relationship between design and science.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, Talk to Me thrives on an important late 20th-century cultural development in design: a shift from the centrality of function to that of meaning. From this new perspective, objects contain information that goes well beyond their immediate use or appearance, providing access to complex systems and networks and acting as gateways and interpreters. Whether openly and actively, or in subtle, subliminal ways, things talk to us, and designers write the initial script that lets us develop and improvise the dialogue. Talk to Me focuses on objects that involve direct interaction, such as interfaces, information systems, communication devices, and projects that establish a practical, emotional or even sensual connection between their users and entities such as cities, companies, governmental institutions, as well as other people. The featured objects range in date from the early 1980s - beginning with the first Graphic User Interface, developed by Xerox Parc in 1981 - with particular attention given to projects from the last five years and to several ones currently in development. Included are a diverse array of examples, from computer and machine interfaces to websites, video games, devices and tools, and installations. Organized thematically, Talk to Me features essays by Paola Antonelli, Jamer Hunt, Alexandra Midel, Kevin Slavin, and Koi Vinh. By introducing design practices that are becoming increasingly crucial to our world, the book presents a highly distilled sample of today's best design production that uses technology in creative and unexpected ways, showing how rich and deep design's influence will be on our future.

The best-selling author of Subliminal and The Drunkard’s Walk teaches you how to tap into the hidden power of your brain. “Elastic is a book that will help you survive the whirlwind.” —Daniel H. Pink, author of When and A Whole New Mind Named to the 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards Longlist In this startling and provocative look at how the human mind deals with change, Leonard Mlodinow shows us to unleash the natural abilities we all possess so we can thrive in dynamic and troubled times. Truly original minds capitalize when everyone else struggles. And most of us assume that these abilities are innate, reserved for a select few. But Mlodinow reveals that we all possess them, that we all have encoded in our brains a skill he terms elastic thinking—and he guides us in how to harness it. Drawing on groundbreaking research, Mlodinow outlines how we can learn to let go of comfortable ideas and become accustomed to ambiguity and contradiction; how we can rise above conventional mindsets and reframe the questions we ask; and how we can improve our ability to solve problems and generate new ideas—critical skills for achieving professional and personal success in our quickly morphing world.

One of the most provocative and exciting architects today, Greg Lynn has defined how designers and architects use computers as a medium, operating in an expanded field that fuses cutting-edge technology, contemporary art, and science fiction aesthetics with architectural form. At the epicenter of a debate about the role of digital design and new fabrication methods in architecture and general design culture, his projects skillfully blend high technology and detailed craftsmanship, driven by modeling software from the film and aerospace industries. They range from the Ravioli lounge chair for Vitra to the Embryological House, a pre-fab housing type that takes advantage of new manufacturing technologies to produce customized houses adaptable to local conditions. Included are contributions from theorists, architects, and artists, and futurists such as Sylvia Lavin, Ben van Berkel, and Caroline Bos of UN Studio, J.G. Ballard, and Tom Friedman, among others. Greg Lynn FORM offers a window into Lynn's methods and techniques, theoretical positions, and career trajectory. Rather than a retrospective of Lynn's career, it is thought-provoking and forward-looking.

Information may be beautiful, but our decisions about the data we choose to represent and how we represent it are never neutral. This insightful history traces how data visualization accompanied modern technologies of war, colonialism and the management of social issues of poverty, health and crime. Discussion is based around examples of visualization, from the ancient Andean information technology of the quipu to contemporary projects that show the fate of our rubbish and take a participatory approach to visualizing cities. This analysis places visualization in its theoretical and cultural contexts, and provides a critical framework for understanding the history of information design with new directions for contemporary practice.

How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more—about everything—reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.

"Born first as an online platform, and then as a series of public debates, 'Design and Violence' organized by Paola Antonelli and Jamer Hunt, examines the ways in which violence manifests in the post-2001 landscape and asks what makes these manifestations unique to their era. Design and Violence' is not a gallery-based exhibition simply translated online. From our earliest conversations, we conceived it as a platform for multiple projects--a series of public debates, a set of academic course materials, a symposium and this book, for instance--with the website as anchor. This book brings together controversial, provocative, and compelling design projects with leading voices from the fields of art and design, science, law, criminal justice, ethics, finance, journalism, and social justice. Each author responds to one object--ranging from an AK-47 to a Euthanasia Rollercoaster, from plastic handcuffs to the Stuxnet digital virus--sparking dialogue, reflection, and debate. These experimental and wide-ranging conversations make Design and Violence an invaluable resource for lively discussions and classroom curricula.