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Archive for the ‘staff favorite’ Category

Clouding the brain

Man is a flexible species. We tend to adapt quite rapidly to new environments. But how fast can these adaptations turn to new evolutionary traits? For instance: to what extent is the internet changing our cognitive capabilities?

Back in the day, the story goes, we could remember whole bible stories. We could even sing entire newspapers. Because there weren’t any, we had to remember it all. That changed with the invention of book printing. Remembering became less important and instead, as philosopher Walter Ong claimed, our brains could focus more on comparing and analyzing. So our analytical skills grew.

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Ties van de Werff
on 05/08/10 2 Comments »
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- Digital-Presence | Hyperreality | Physical-computing
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Dog Modding in China

As a child, I already saw some great tiger potential in my cat and some shark-ish attitude in the behaviour of my goldfish. Personally, I think that since we started domesticating animals, man must have had fantasies about undomesticating them. The thrill of making ‘man’s best friend’ into his enemy again – if only it where for one day: Back to the tribe!

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Hendrik-Jan Grievink
on 19/07/10 4 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Back-to-the-Tribe | Fake-for-Real | Image-Consumption | utopian-suburbia
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<a href="http://www.vimeo.com/8633540">http://www.vimeo.com/8633540</a>
Making a Telegraph with Stone Age Tools

The suited guy in the video is an employee from the office of materials that goes into the wilderness to test if it would have been possible to create a fully functioning telegraph with stone-age tools.

Guess what? Using no modern tools or materials and relying entirely on material found on the ground in the wilderness, a telegraph switch producing .7 volts of electricity was completed. This shows that – if only one had the right knowledge –
an entire telegraphic network could have been constructed in the stone age.

Now our suited friend only has to wait for another stone-ager to create a second telegraph so he has someone to communicate with. Perhaps smoke signs would have been a better plan? Anyhow it is comforting to see that the presence of human knowledge and skill is more decisive than the existence of manufacturing infrastructure.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 13/06/10 1 Comment »
Tags
- Back-to-the-Tribe | Technorhetoric
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Under the Beach lies the Pavement

During the riots of 1968, as students in Paris ripped up paving stones and threw them at the police, one of the rallying cries was “sous le pave: la plage” (under the pavement: the beach). The beach – the incarnation of a natural, undesignated and non-utilitarian space – was the opposite of the street, a historic relic of a designated, oppressive environment based on private property.

Since May 1968, policymakers have learned to better comply with the needs of the public. At various cities in the worlds every summer a temporarily artificial beach is created on the pavement. Last year alone, in Mexico City the local government created 10 artificial beaches, mostly in poorer parts of the city.

In general, the camouflaging of infrastructure with ‘natural imagery’ has proven a successful strategy to provide the public with a seemingly more friendly and acceptable living environment. This, of course, doesn’t withstand that order has to be maintained: Parisian sunbathers that go nude or wear g-strings on the capital’s artificial beaches risk a 38 euro fine if they are caught baring their breasts or buttocks. Under the beach – the pavement.

Image: ‘Paris Plage’ (Paris Beach) along banks of the River Seine in Paris.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 05/06/10 Comments »
Tags
- Biomimicmarketing | Fake-nature | manufactured-landscapes | Officegarden | Recreation | utopian-suburbia
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The Anthropocene Debate: Marking Humanity’s Impact

Via Yale Environment 360, by Elizabeth Kolbert

Is human activity altering the planet on a scale comparable to major geological events of the past? Scientists are now considering whether to officially designate a new geological epoch to reflect the changes that homo sapiens have wrought: the Anthropocene.

The Holocene — or “wholly recent” epoch — is what geologists call the 11,000 years or so since the end of the last ice age. As epochs go, the Holocene is barely out of diapers; its immediate predecessor, the Pleistocene, lasted more than two million years, while many earlier epochs, like the Eocene, went on for more than 20 million years. Still, the Holocene may be done for. People have become such a driving force on the planet that many geologists argue a new epoch — informally dubbed the Anthropocene — has begun.

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Elizabeth Kolbert
on 02/06/10 1 Comment »
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- Anthropocene | Anthropomorphobia | Designed-by-Evolution | manufactured-landscapes
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Norwegian Boy saves Sister from Moose Attack using World of Warcraft Skills

Hans Jørgen Olsen, a 12-year-old Norwegian boy, saved himself and his sister from a moose attack using skills he picked up playing the online role playing game World of Warcraft.

Hans and his sister got into trouble after they had trespassed the territory of the moose during a walk in the forest near their home. When the moose attacked them, Hans knew the first thing he had to do was ‘taunt’ and provoke the animal so that it would leave his sister alone and she could run to safety. ‘Taunting’ is a move one uses in World of Warcraft to get monsters off of the less-well-armored team members.

Once Hans was a target, he remembered another skill he had picked up at level 30 in ‘World of Warcraft’ – he feigned death. The moose lost interest in the inanimate boy and wandered off into the woods. When he was safely alone Hans ran back home to share his tale of video game-inspired survival.

Via Nettavisen.no.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 31/05/10 97 Comments »
Tags
- Back-to-the-Tribe | Digital-Presence | virtual-for-real
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Self-healing Surfaces

What if a scratch on your car door could heal itself, just like the human skin does?
Engineers are working on a way to transfer the self-healing ability of the skin to surfaces and materials. The idea behind this, is to evenly distribute fluid-filled capsules into an electroplated layer on top of the material that could be subject to corrosion and rust. If the surface is damaged, the pellets burst and a coating fluid runs out to ‘repair’ the scratch.

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Arnoud van den Heuvel
on 24/05/10 Comments »
Tags
- Bionics | Hypermaterials | Nanotechnology
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LED Religion

The Catholic Church is not exactly renowned for its progressive attitude towards technological progress. Just think of the belligerent attitude the Church still has towards contemporary next nature phenomena like condom use, the anti–conception pill or gay marriage and you’ll get the drift. When it comes to fund raising, however, the Church tends to be more technologically progressive.

During a recent visit of the Central Cathedral in Barcelona, Spain, I spotted these LED based wake lights, which seamlessly replace the wax candles traditionally used to make your prayer tangible. Apparently the God fearing people in control of the Church decided there is no noteworthy spiritual difference between LED’s and burning candles?

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Koert van Mensvoort
on 20/05/10 3 Comments »
Tags
- Image-Consumption | Plastic-Fantastic | Technorhetoric
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Come see the Berg!

So you’ve seen the peak of the Mount Everest on tour? Descended the bobsled ride of the Matterhorn in a Disneyland? Think you’ve seen it all? Now come and see The Berg in Berlin!

German architect Jakob Tigges explores the outskirts of megalomania with his proposed a plan to construct a 1000-meter tall mountain at the site of the recently closed Tempelhof airport in Berlin, which was originally constructed by the Nazi’s as part of their megalomaniac Germania plan.

If realized, ‘The Berg’ would be the largest man-made icon. A tourist attraction unlike any city has ever served, providing Berliners and (more importantly) tourists with a convenient location to enjoy a range of activities including hiking, hang-gliding, rock climbing and even skiing, as the mountain would collect snow on its peak from September to March offering the perfect skiing climate in the otherwise slope-less city.

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Koert van Mensvoort
on 17/05/10 1 Comment »
Tags
- Biomimicmarketing | Fake-nature | Global-Image-Economy | Hypernature | manufactured-landscapes | Recreation | utopian-suburbia
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ECO Currency – A Proposal to Balance Economical and Environmental Value

Imagine we would have an alternative monetary currency for environmental value. Would the rain forest still be destroyed if there existed an ECO–currency to express its value and pay farmers to let the trees stand? Designers of the Next Nature Lab are investigating how we can link economy with ecology. A proposal on how we can link economy with ecology.

The starting point of the ECO–currency(*) project is the hypothesis that an important factor in the ongoing environmental crisis is the disconnect between the economical ecology and the environmental ecology. With the latter we mean the ecology of plants, trees, animals, and other organic material. Whereas the economical ecology is defined by our financial system of market, money, goods and other economical exchange. Our second working hypothesis states that we could address environmental issues by linking the economical sphere and the environmental sphere in a better way than that is currently the case.

Comparing the two ecologies: The rain forest is a stable, self-sustainable and threatened ecosystem, whereas the financial system is a unstable and threatening ecosystem that feeds on the biosphere.

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Koert van Mensvoort
on 12/05/10 6 Comments »
Tags
- Biopolitics | Economology | Global-Image-Economy | Guided-Growth | Sentient Spaces | Symbolic-Overdrive | Wild-systems
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Nano Product: The Food Printer

Are we creating the penicillin or the asbestos of the 21st century? In the months preceding our Nano Supermarket Project, we share some speculative nanotech products with you. Here’s another one in the Nano Supermarket Products series: The Food Printer. And don’t forget to send in your own project for the Nano Supermarket!

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Hendrik-Jan Grievink
on 11/05/10 Comments »
Tags
- Design-for-debate | Fake-for-Real | Food-Technology | Image-Consumption | Nano Supermarket | Nanotechnology
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Digitally Enhance your Ego

Avatars, almost every internet user has at least one of them running around somewhere on the web. We control then in numerous games and forums, but do they also control us?

Researchers at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at the Stanford university have researched the effects of the appearance of avatars on the behavior of their ‘controllers’. People with a more attractive avatar acted more extrovert and outgoing than the ones with a less good looking one.

This effect however isn’t as surprising as the following effect: it doesn’t wear of once the computer is turned off. In a test the subjects were asked to first interact in a digital space and afterward, without knowing that it still was the same experiment, to split money with another person in real life. People who have been playing with taller avatars were more likely to make unfair split proposal in their favor and less likely to accept an unfair offer from the other side. This also works the other way around: shorter avatars result in less aggressive negotiating and accepting less fair offers.

So are you ready to take your digital booster shots before you go into a meeting? and what kind of negotiator do you want to be?

Read the entire research article by Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson (pdf)
Tomas Pieters
on 23/04/10 2 Comments »
Tags
- Boomeranged-Metaphors | Digital-Presence | Manufactured-Bodies | transparant-interfaces
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Archive for the ‘staff favorite’ Category

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