After a protracted struggle with dense, recursive text, this weekend I finally made it all the way through Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation by Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver. First published in 1972, it is a manifesto for readymakers, arguing that everyone is a designer and all the world is a mash-up of disparate elements. In some ways it is very of its time -- swept up in the hippie-futurism of Buckminster Fuller, Drop City, Stewart Brand, and Archigram -- but in other ways it is remarkably prescient, fully predicting the internet and the resurgence in maker culture that we are seeing today.
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