Hasta La Ideas

Bruce Sterling launched yesterday his third major web project (after the Dead Media Project and the Viridian Movement): The User’s Guide to Imaginary Gadgets (which is also Bruce’s new book project).

This project, which is currently hosted on Bruce’s blog, is described as “a catalog of the weirdest things imaginable”, and comes with its own manifesto.

The “users” of imaginative gadgets are people trying hard to think about the nonexistent in an effective way. Not daydreamers, but true users of the imagination: creative people active within many fields. That’s “Speculative Culture.” […]

I’m interested in gadgets that illuminate speculative thought. I’m especially looking for imaginary constructs at the edges of the thinkable. Mere “weirdness” is parochial. The “impossible” is trivial. I’m searching for gadgets that are mind-stretching — so as to explore the set of possible stretches. These are the “imaginary gadgets” that the imaginative can “use.”

The first gadget on the list is the Antikythera Device (pictured above).

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