thinking about and working on

  • Storia rapida della velocità, forthcoming in May 2025 with Il Saggiatore (Milan), is the short version of Quickening. An Anthropology of Speed (which will include a range of additional materials including an inventory of so-called “iconotales” of wheels, winds, streamlines, smoke, lightning, wings, etc. as signs of speed. I have yet to sign a contract with publishers in other languages (including English). Still tinkering with some of the components that won’t be in the Italian volume.
  • Innovation (in 10 Keywords). Still working up a short book that consists in a lexicon of 10 + 1 micro-essays written in the style of Raymond Williams’ acclaimed Keywords. The words are: Change > Progress > Disruption > Renewal > Evolution > Revolution > Invention > Tradition > Metamorphosis > Translation.
  • gathering materials and working out aspects of the argument of a large-scale book on the artist/designer/design educator BRUNO MUNARI; I’m way behind on this, but still chipping away at it with pleasure.
  • forever working on a cultural history of the 20th century approached from the standpoint of the careers of new materials.  Chapters: “Rayon/Marinetti” (The Fabrics of Modern Times), “Glass/Terragni” (The Strange Tale of the Man of Glass [Who Was Made of Plastic]); “Luminous Aluminum” (A Biography of the Moka); “Cement/Gladkov” (Poesie Concrete); “Asphalt” (The Romance of the Tarmac); “Styrene Song/Queneau” (Plasticity); “Cardboard/Fuller” (The Dream of Paper Furniture).

unpublished manuscripts, other writing in progress

  • gathering materials on the history of public address systems and their impact upon the design of public spaces from the 1930s through the present as part of a broader inquiry into the prehistory of the electronic public sphere.
  • “Sweat,” essay on sudor in medieval moral philosophy, medicine, and literature.
  • “Rubber Sole,” article on Ferragamo shoes and the Autarchy campaign of the 1930’s.

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topics on which I’m gathering materials

  • looking for interesting materials about the history of CARDBOARD, especially cardboard housing and furniture, not to mention poetry and stories about cardboard; ditto for a couple of other materials: VULCANIZED RUBBER, SILICON, TITANIUM, STAINLESS STEEL, CARBON FIBER
  • the history and design of DISCOTHEQUES and light shows
  • histories of KIOSKS, INFOPOINTS, and PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEMS
  • quantitative notions of selfhood: biography as lab experiment (from Jules Michelet’s Journals to Piero Portaluppi and Bucky Fuller’s self-archiving practices to the Quantified Self movement

 other websites that I’ve been known to post on