The New Ecology of Things (NET)

The New Ecology of Things (NET) began as an interdisciplinary design course run by Art Center's Graduate Media Design Program (MDP) and has evolved into a conceptual model for thinking about design and its relationship to a complex, emergent ecology arising from integrated, pervasive, networked technologies. Co-taught by Philip van Allen, Bruce Sterling and Nikolaus Haftermaas, the studio course used a pre-press version of Sterling's mediawork pamphlet Shaping Things as its departure point, and was sponsored by Sun Microsystems Labs. Working with an alpha version of Sun Spots -- micro-scale networked computers -- students designed working prototypes and playful scenarios to imagine a massively networked future.