This week, the Design Museum in London opens "California: Designing Freedom." Scroll through the gallery for a preview from the exhibition's curator Brendan Mcgetrick. <br /><br />"This is from Waymo, a subsidiary of Google. It's the first fully self-driving car, if you look at it you'll see it has no steering wheel or peddles or anything. You just get inside, press the button and it drives. It has sensors all over it, which allow it to see the road and process all the information it needs to drive. This prototype has never been seen before in the UK."
Waymo's prototype self-driving car on the streets of Austin, Texas. —
This week, the Design Museum in London opens "California: Designing Freedom." Scroll through the gallery for a preview from the exhibition's curator Brendan Mcgetrick.

"This is from Waymo, a subsidiary of Google. It's the first fully self-driving car, if you look at it you'll see it has no steering wheel or peddles or anything. You just get inside, press the button and it drives. It has sensors all over it, which allow it to see the road and process all the information it needs to drive. This prototype has never been seen before in the UK."
Courtesy Waymo
"These are basically a camera embedded in glasses which allows you to make short videos which you can automatically upload to Snapchat. It makes it a natural part of your life as opposed to something you are choosing to do. We are presenting it as the next chapter in social media and sharing."
Snapchat Glasses, Steve Horowitz, 2016 —
"These are basically a camera embedded in glasses which allows you to make short videos which you can automatically upload to Snapchat. It makes it a natural part of your life as opposed to something you are choosing to do. We are presenting it as the next chapter in social media and sharing."
Courtesy Snap Inc, Los Angeles
"It's a map of the world that isn't defined by geography or politics but by connections on Facebook."
Map of the world drawn using Facebook connections, Paul Butler, 2010-2015 —
"It's a map of the world that isn't defined by geography or politics but by connections on Facebook."
Courtesy Facebook
"This was created by a company called The Odin, they are a start-up that are trying to help kick-start DIY genetic engineering and bio-hacking. This kit is a very cheap, basic kit which you can buy and create a little lab in your garage. Why it matters in California is because things that are either developed in the military or big companies and are very expensive, these products, however, have been translated into much cheaper, available versions and then spread into society."
DIY Bacterial Gene Engineering CRISPR Kit, Josiah Zayner, 2015 —
"This was created by a company called The Odin, they are a start-up that are trying to help kick-start DIY genetic engineering and bio-hacking. This kit is a very cheap, basic kit which you can buy and create a little lab in your garage. Why it matters in California is because things that are either developed in the military or big companies and are very expensive, these products, however, have been translated into much cheaper, available versions and then spread into society."
Courtesy The ODIN
"This is blotter paper dipped in LSD and then distributed in small tabs. It comes from Mark McCloud who has designed and owns a big archive of blotter paper art. It's interesting to us because it represents LSD culture, which was enormously influential in the 1960s. LSD played a big role in the early development in computers. A lot of early innovators in computing were taking LSD to imagine new ways in which computers could change the world."
The Sorcerer's apprentice LSD blotter paper, 1978 —
"This is blotter paper dipped in LSD and then distributed in small tabs. It comes from Mark McCloud who has designed and owns a big archive of blotter paper art. It's interesting to us because it represents LSD culture, which was enormously influential in the 1960s. LSD played a big role in the early development in computers. A lot of early innovators in computing were taking LSD to imagine new ways in which computers could change the world."
Courtesy Mark McCloud/Institute of Illegal Images
"This is the Captain America Motorcycle designed by Ben Harvey and Clifford Vaughn -- two motorcycle customization people working during the 1960s in LA. They made the bike for Easy Rider and Peter Fonda (left.) We have a replica of the bike in the show as the original was destroyed in the movie."
The Captain America motorcycle, 1969 —
"This is the Captain America Motorcycle designed by Ben Harvey and Clifford Vaughn -- two motorcycle customization people working during the 1960s in LA. They made the bike for Easy Rider and Peter Fonda (left.) We have a replica of the bike in the show as the original was destroyed in the movie."
Courtesy Sunset Boulevard/Corbis /Getty Images
"This is an example of the pattern drawings that were submitted by Buckminster Fuller. Buckminster was the architect and visionary of the Geodesic Dome, one of the things that became very popular with the back-to-land commune movement. After the summer of love in San Francisco a lot of the hippy communities moved to the desert, to the forest and all over America. The Geodesic dome was their preferred form of architecture and home, partly because it was easy to build out of materials, but also because it represented a new society, a networked society of pieces coming together joined through these links."
Geodesic Dome, Buckminster Fuller, 1951 —
"This is an example of the pattern drawings that were submitted by Buckminster Fuller. Buckminster was the architect and visionary of the Geodesic Dome, one of the things that became very popular with the back-to-land commune movement. After the summer of love in San Francisco a lot of the hippy communities moved to the desert, to the forest and all over America. The Geodesic dome was their preferred form of architecture and home, partly because it was easy to build out of materials, but also because it represented a new society, a networked society of pieces coming together joined through these links."
Courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
"This is part of a series of posters Shepard Fairey made ahead of Trump's inauguration. The posters are positive affirmations of Muslim, Latina and Native American women. What is interesting about it for us is that Fairey made them freely available to download, share and print because he wanted them to be as widely available as possible. So, around the time when protests were erupting as Trump proposed his ban on immigration, loads of people were carrying round these posters. It's using digital distribution to spread a work."
"We the People" (2017) by Shepard Fairey —
"This is part of a series of posters Shepard Fairey made ahead of Trump's inauguration. The posters are positive affirmations of Muslim, Latina and Native American women. What is interesting about it for us is that Fairey made them freely available to download, share and print because he wanted them to be as widely available as possible. So, around the time when protests were erupting as Trump proposed his ban on immigration, loads of people were carrying round these posters. It's using digital distribution to spread a work."
Artist: Shepard Fairey / Photographer: Ridwan Adhami / via amplifier foundation
"The origin of the picture is unknown, it's an artifact of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) which is one of the earliest civil rights movements that originated at the University of California, Berkley. The movement used punch cards, an artifact of early computing, to make the point that the use of computers is turning people into data and turning universities into machines. They were using the materials of technology to make an argument against technology."
Free Speech Movement Punch Card, 1964 —
"The origin of the picture is unknown, it's an artifact of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) which is one of the earliest civil rights movements that originated at the University of California, Berkley. The movement used punch cards, an artifact of early computing, to make the point that the use of computers is turning people into data and turning universities into machines. They were using the materials of technology to make an argument against technology."
Courtesy Free Speech Movement Archives, Berkeley
"This was created by Google in the Google Material Design Department. What's interesting is that 'Material' is the name of the platform they have developed which provides a single language for all of their apps. If you want to build a new app or a new product for Google then you use this 'Material' design language. Even though it's a digital product, they use physical models to develop it because they want to ensure they are using shadows, layering and things we associate with the physical world."
Google Material Design paper maquettes, Matías Duarte/Material UX, 2014 —
"This was created by Google in the Google Material Design Department. What's interesting is that 'Material' is the name of the platform they have developed which provides a single language for all of their apps. If you want to build a new app or a new product for Google then you use this 'Material' design language. Even though it's a digital product, they use physical models to develop it because they want to ensure they are using shadows, layering and things we associate with the physical world."
Courtesy Jesse Kaczmarek/The Rivalry