Digital Foundations has received some eclectic and exciting praise. I have included some choice bits below, but my favorite are the numerous peers who have said more or less the same thing: “This is the book we have all been waiting for!”
This book is critically important for the arts. Far too few artists are sophisticated enough to be aware of the stealthily growing problem at hand: Corporate, cookie-cutter tools—and their manuals—that standardize and cramp creativity threaten to become the greatest shapers of late 20th & 21st century art, just as architecture’s greatest influence this past century has unfortunately been neither a renowned school of architecture, nor even a great architect, but the catalog of standardized options: door frames, windows, and other prefab parts, from which 99 percent of structures are now built. Artists will remain stuck with old patterns and limited options, unless we create viable open source alternatives and brilliant interventions like this book!
John S. Johnson
Chairman of the Pacific Foundation
Founder of the Screenwriters Colony, The Filmmakers Collaborative and Eyebeam, Art + Technology centerThis is how I would describe the experience of reading Digital Foundations: I have learned to speak, say Swahili, because I’m hanging out with a lot of Somalians. It takes me a few years maybe, but by now I’m pretty good at it. Then I come across this book, “How to speak Swahili” that goes over all the basics. And I’m like, whoa I’m glad I don’t have to learn Swahili all over again, this shit looks confusing, but this book makes it look so easy! (big sigh of relief) Then I find some vocab I never even knew! That will come in handy…
Xan Young
architect, Aedas LAXan Young, a friend and architect