Future Craft is the Media Lab’s sustainable design course. It was created by Leonardo Bonanni and Amanda Parkes in 2007 and has since spawned workshops and classes around the world. I’ll be posting archived student work and publications related to the three years that Future Craft was taught at MIT.
This paper explains how Future Craft was part of the inspiration for Sourcemap. Download the original article here.
Digital media allows new kinds of craft specialties to evolve through distributed groups of like-minded makers. Download the article here.
Mako Hill presents the history of Free Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) as part of Future Craft 2009.
In 2008 we wrote a paper about the first year teaching of Future Craft, including some of the exercises that were prototyped: product autopsy, creating a digital identity and body interfaces. You can also download the full paper here.
Watch Amanda and Leo present the paper at CHI 2008:
Introduction:
On the wealth of nations - Adam Smith
De-technologizing:
Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered - E.F. Schumacher
Tools for Conviviality - Ivan Illych
Open Source for Fun and Profit:
Episodes of Collective Invention (pdf) - Peter Meyer
The Cathedral and the Bazaar - Eric Raymond
FAB - Neil Gershenfeld
Sustainable Communications:
PR! A Social History of Spin - Stewart Ewen
Public Relations Inquiry as Rhetorical Criticism - Stephen Elwood
Gone Tomorrow: the Hidden Life of Garbage - Heather Rogers
Alternate Materials and Processes:
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things - McDonough and Braungart
Eco-Design Sourcebook - Fuad-Luke
Plastic: the Making of a Synthetic Century - Fenichell
These are photos from the first product autopsy workshop held as part of the MIT Media Lab’s Simplicity in March 2007. My original description for the workshop:
Where do things come from? And where do they go after we’re done with them? My work looks at alternative ways to make, use and throw away. In this workshop we will dissect defunct devices and create a narrative from their constituent parts: How was it made? Who made it? Can I make it? What is it for? Is that all? Where does it go? Is it trash?
