Note: you may also be interested in the pamphlet I co-authored with Mark Shepard, Urban Computing and its Discontents, now available for free download from Lulu.
My first book, Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing, is available for purchase from Amazon.
As the subtitle suggests, it’s about an important change I see unfolding in the world: the emergence of a computing without computers, where information processing is almost imperceptible, but everywhere around us.
Smart buildings, smart furniture, smart clothing…even smart bathtubs. Networked street signs and self-describing soda cans. Gestural interfaces like those seen in Minority Report. The RFID tags now embedded in everything from credit cards to the family pet. All of these are facets of the class of technologies I think of as “everyware.”
In the book’s 81 brief theses, I explore various facets of the way everyware is already reshaping our lives, transforming our understanding of the cities we live in, the communities we belong to – and the way we see ourselves. What does this mean to those of us who will be encountering it? How will it transform our lives? And how will we learn to make wise decisions about something so hard to see?
Here’s what some folks I really respect have said about the book:
- Howard Rheingold:
“Adam Greenfield is intense, engaged, intelligent and caring. I pay attention to him. I counsel you to do the same.”
- Rebecca MacKinnon, Global Voices Online:
“Adam is a visionary. he has true compassion and respect for ordinary users like me who are struggling to use and understand the new technology being thrust on us at overwhelming speed.”
- Régine Debatty, We Make Money Not Art:
“I’d recommend everyone read [Everyware] ASAP.”
- Dan Lockton, Architectures of Control in Design:
“Overall, a most impressive book which clearly leads the reader through the implications of ubiquitous computing, and the issues surrounding its development and deployment in a very logical style…Greenfield’s book is an excellent primer on the subject which ought to be on every designer’s bookshelf.”
- Marrije Schaake, Duck for Cover booklog:
“This is going to be a rave review…I think that basically anyone who is smart should read this book, whether you’re in the IT/web/mobile business or not. [R]equired reading. Everyware is brilliant, lucid, compassionate, practical, and hugely motivating…hurray for Adam Greenfield, who has written such a beautiful book for all of us.”
- Michele Tepper, ACM:
“Copies should be handed out to everyone who has ever made a prediction about the always-on future, to make them consider the implications of their ideas.”
- Bruce Sterling:
“Groundbreaking…Anybody with any interest in ubicomp issues should read this book. It’s written with remarkable elegance. One puts it down with a strange conviction that web-designers have transcended geekdom and achieved Zen soulfulness.”
- Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing:
“Fascinating and thought-provoking.”
- Dan Saffer, Senior Interaction Designer, Adaptive Path:
“It will be hard for any interaction designer to read Adam Greenfield’s Everyware without feeling like the work we’re doing now is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. A combination call-to-arms, overview, and prophecy, Everyware is a frightening, but engaging, read…highly recommended.”
- Jeffrey Zeldman, Principal, Happy Cog Studios:
“Adam Greenfield has written one of the most provocative books in years. If the right people read it, Everyware may do for the coming, computerless computing interface what Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things did for design generally.”
- Christopher Fahey, Principal, Behavior Design:
“I’ll just say up front that I think Adam Greenfield is a genius…He’s managed to write a technology book woven out of a dozen diverse themes, including futurism, science fiction, culture, art, humanism, and even ethics. The book goes beyond simple technophilia vs. technophobia, and should be a required read for any person interested in even one of the above themes. [W]ill be cited and quoted by future thinkers for many years to come as we continue to deal with the ramifications of ubicomp.”
- Steve Silberman, editor, Wired:
“A gracefully written, fascinating, and deeply wise book on one of the most powerful ideas of the digital age – and the obstacles we must overcome before we can make ubiquitous computing a reality.”
- Peter Morville, author of Ambient Findability:
“Brilliant, iconoclastic, original, essential, Everyware is an invaluable roadmap to the future. Find this book. It will change your life.”
- Liz Danzico, former Director of Experience Strategy, AIGA:
“Anyone interested in understanding the infusion, diffusion, and elusion of information will be at once delighted and informed by Everyware. As everyware becomes everyday, Greenfield takes us on a smart and stunning tour of the new normal.”
(And hey, it’s also available in French. What could possibly be better?)
