If the content of a book is what one finds between two covers, then Deserted Devices and Wasted Fences is definitely one whose covers, in the broad sense of the word, do not totally tell the same story (the book itself, however, as becomes clear at the end, proves to have a very unified approach, building clear bridges between critical theory, science and technology, and practice-based artistic research).
The introductory and first part of the publication—the front cover if one prefers—insist on a program that is rather close to a classic topic of technology and society studies: the reappropriation of technological artefacts in unforeseen and not always programmed situations and contexts as well as the creative reuse that people can make of things by giving them new forms, but also new functions and functionalities. To paraphrase the SCOT axiom, “form follows failure” (itself a reinterpretation of the designer’s credo “form...