Like the magazine, Metropolis, that spawned it, Design Is...celebrates design in all its guises. This anthology of groundbreaking articles presents an ongoing conversation about design and design culture in the generous and lucid manner we have come to expect from this world-famous publication. Over seventy contributors-including virtually every important design writer of the last twenty years, like Paul Goldberger, Luc Sante, Philippe Starck, Phillip Lopate, Julius Shulman, Michael Sorkin, and Paola Antonelli-reveal how design has permeated all aspects of our lives and how it will continue to shape the places we live and work and the objects we buy and use in the future. Design Is... is an easy and enjoyable introduction to the designed world around us, and a knowing, rollicking reader for those who are passionate about design.

For Sherry Turkle, "We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with." In Evocative Objects, Turkle collects writings by scientists, humanists, artists, and designers that trace the power of everyday things. These essays reveal objects as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships, and provoke new ideas.

This volume's special contribution is its focus on everyday riches: the simplest of objects—an apple, a datebook, a laptop computer—are shown to bring philosophy down to earth. The poet contends, "No ideas but in things." The notion of evocative objects goes further: objects carry both ideas and passions. In our relations to things, thought and feeling are inseparable.

Whether it's a student's beloved 1964 Ford Falcon (left behind for a station wagon and motherhood), or a cello that inspires a meditation on fatherhood, the intimate objects in this collection are used to reflect on larger themes—the role of objects in design and play, discipline and desire, history and exchange, mourning and memory, transition and passage, meditation and new vision.

In the interest of enriching these connections, Turkle pairs each autobiographical essay with a text from philosophy, history, literature, or theory, creating juxtapositions at once playful and profound. So we have Howard Gardner's keyboards and Lev Vygotsky's hobbyhorses; William Mitchell's Melbourne train and Roland Barthes' pleasures of text; Joseph Cevetello's glucometer and Donna Haraway's cyborgs. Each essay is framed by images that are themselves evocative. Essays by Turkle begin and end the collection, inviting us to look more closely at the everyday objects of our lives, the familiar objects that drive our routines, hold our affections, and open out our world in unexpected ways.

Essays by:
Julian Beinart, Matthew Belmonte, Joseph Cevetello, Robert P. Crease, Olivia Dasté, Glorianna Davenport, Judith Donath, Michael M. J. Fischer, Howard Gardner, Tracy Gleason, Nathan Greenslit, Stefan Helmreich, Michelle Hlubinka, Henry Jenkins, Caroline A. Jones, Evelyn Fox Keller, Tod Machover, Susannah Mandel, David Mann, Irene Castle McLaughlin, Eden Medina, Jeffrey Mifflin, William J. Mitchell, David Mitten, Annalee Newitz, Trevor Pinch, Susan Pollak, Mitchel Resnick, Nancy Rosenblum, Susan Spilecki, Carol Strohecker, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Sherry Turkle, Gail Wight, Susan Yee

This new edition of the hacker's own phenomenally successful lexicon includes more than 100 new entries and updates or revises 200 more. Historically and etymologically richer than its predecessor, it supplies additional background on existing entries and clarifies the murky origins of several important jargon terms (overturning a few long-standing folk etymologies) while still retaining its high giggle value.

. . . .

SAMPLE DEFINITION:

:hacker: n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating {hack value}. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a UNIX hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term is {cracker}.

The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global community defined by the net (see {network, the} and {Internet address}). It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see {hacker ethic, the}).

It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled {bogus}). See also {wannabee}.

Beautifully illustrated with more than 250 full-color photographs, this authoritative and easy-to-use field guide identifies and describes more than 250 wildflowers of the eastern United States.

MySQL is the most popular SQL database in the open source community and is used almost universally by web sites running on open source systems. As powerful and flexible as it is lightweight and efficient, MySQL packs a large feature set into a very small and fast engine that now runs on more than 500,000 servers. This renowned online manual that has supported MySQL administrators and database developers for years is now available in paperback format. This book is an exact reproduction of the MySQL Reference Manual from the MySQL development team's Web site, minus some non-technical appendices. This version covers MySQL 4.0.

Many sophisticated topics appear in this comprehensive manual, ranging from the hitches you may run into when first installing MySQL to internals that will help you tune your queries. MySQL Reference Manual contains all the comprehensive reference material one would expect for building the product, running administrative utilities, and using various API as well as MySQL's rich version of SQL. In addition, you can turn a page and find such unexpected riches as: A thorough comparison of MySQL with SQL standards and other databasesA discussion of privileges and suggested uses of privileges to enhance securityDirections for replicating a database and for running several MySQL servers on a single systemDirections for initializing a database from a flat fileGuidelines for estimating the performance of different queriesA far-reaching discussion of optimization, with reference to the implementation of MySQLInvestigations of the differences between data types and the pros and cons of each type of number, string, or timestampAn extended inquiry into the effects of using delayed insertsA candid explanation of why various errors occur and how to recover from themTips for weighted, full-text searchesDetailed descriptions of the features, strengths, and weaknesses of available table formatsA guide to adding new functions to MySQL

No serious MySQL user should be without this book.

Over a hundred years ago, Edwin Abbott Abbott wrote a mathematical adventure set in a two-dimensional plane world, populated by a hierarchical society of regular geometrical figures-who think and speak and have all too human emotions. Since then Flatland has fascinated generations of readers, becoming a perennial science-fiction favorite. By imagining the contact of beings from different dimensions, the author fully exploited the power of the analogy between the limitations of humans and those of his two-dimensional characters.

A first-rate fictional guide to the concept of multiple dimensions of space, the book will also appeal to those who are interested in computer graphics. This field, which literally makes higher dimensions seeable, has aroused a new interest in visualization. We can now manipulate objects in four dimensions and observe their three-dimensional slices tumbling on the computer screen. But how do we interpret these images? In his introduction, Thomas Banchoff points out that there is no better way to begin exploring the problem of understanding higher-dimensional slicing phenomena than reading this classic novel of the Victorian era.