You step out of bed. Why? Because your alarm clock tells you it is time. A quick glance at the alarm clock tells you that you are still on schedule. First you take a shower and then breakfast. The clock helps you back to reality, “So late already?”, and you think by yourself; “Tomorrow I should shower shorter…” You wanted to clean up before you leave, but decide to leave the mess where it is; all to get back on track. Also the clocks on your way to the office help you to stay on the strict time schedule. When you enter the office-building you wonder if there is still time to get a coffee. Your watch gives you the answer…as always.
Related: Office garden rebellion, Virtual money – cows, coins, credit, airtime, The Nocturnal life of diurnal birds. Picture: Freakingnews.com
The Eco Pod is a experimental design proposal towards the production of clean and renewable energy, which should operate in old, abandoned buildings. Pending an eventual recovery, these buildings become vertical bioreactor that supports micro-algae which produce energy for the city.
The idea comes from the American studios Höweler + Yoon Architecture and Squared Design Lab. It was created to stimulate the economy and ecology of the city of Boston. This way, structures, ruins of abandoned buildings are turned into high-impact capsules coated with multiple ground source of bio-fuels. In this case the micro-algae is 30 times more efficient per acre than traditional.
No this is not some stellar system far away. What is it then? Lets make another picture, this time with the flashlight on…
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A retail lot in Austin, Texas recently sprouted a field of solar photovoltaic sunflowers that soak up the sun’s rays to provide shade while generating a steady stream of electricity.
Although the gigantic fake flowers are rather illustrative and slightly uncanny – are these supposed to be flowers from the Terminator? – the gardening metaphor is fascinating and promising. Just think about the comparison with food: Growing your own food is a deeply intuitive ancient human longing that can bring one a sense of independence, pleasure and bonding with the environment – not for nothing so many city people still have kitchen gardens. Perhaps in our electricity craving next nature, we should be gardening our own electricity.
The installation was designed by artists Harries/Heder and consists of 15 flower-like solar photovoltaic panels located on a pedestrian and bike path between the village of Mueller and Austin’s highway I-35.
Via Inhabitat. Related: Solar trees, Antenna tree mast safari, conductive bodypaint. Thanks: Stoffel Kuenen.
Buttons are everywhere: throughout your day you press them on phones, alarm clocks, keyboards, elevators, dishwashers and of course on the computer screen. Although buttons did not exist in old nature – taken that nipples do not count as buttons – the little symbols of control have been ubiquitous throughout most of our lives. But for how long?
As technology advances, buttons are replaced by sensors, gesture technology and autonomous systems. In fact, it may well be that our grand-grand-children won’t be pushing buttons like we do, as for them the entire environment has become an interface (again).
Although buttons may one day be grand-grand-parents technology, the current generation of people is still so used to pushing buttons, they are increasingly applied as skeuomorphs, meaning that they have no effect or function and are merely providing the user with a decorative feedback. Such buttons are called placebo buttons.
Examples of placebo buttons are unwired walk buttons at pedestrian crossings in New York City and door-close buttons in elevators, which functioning has been replaced by sensors. In some cases the button may have been functional, but may have failed or been disabled during installation or maintenance. Sometimes the button have been deliberately designed to do nothing besides establishing a illusion of control in the mind of the user.
Now one wonders about that big red button in the White House… could that one be a placebo too? Well allright, better not to try if that one just now.
Related: The buttons, Switch Critters – can you make them switch?, The powerbutton button, Magical interaction, Simulating old nature on next nature, Your grand-grand-parents new media, A society of simulations. Thanks Selby.
Today’s technology advances so rapidly that people are often unable to update their media schemas in time and as a result are left cluelessly in awe of it all. Mike Thompson’s Wifi dowsing rod aims to work against this: By basing the design for a wireless internet detector on ancient technology, the user should immediately feel at home with the device.
Although perhaps impractical and anecdotal, the Wifi dowsing rod is an intriguing attempt of using ‘magic’ as a construct to cope with the technological complexity accumulating around us. A great gift for your grand-grand-parents.
Related: Magical interaction, Your grand-grand-grand-parents new media, Dandella shows you the way, Voodoo communication device.
Getting information as fast as possible and on the spot is the trend. So what could be more direct than having information fired directly into the eye?
Today — together with his students — Babak A. Parviz, bionanotechnology expert at University of Washington, is already producing devices that have a lens with one wirelessly Radio Frequency powered LED. To turn such a lens into a functional browser, control circuits, communication circuits and miniature antennas will have to be integrated. These lenses will eventually include hundreds of semitransparent LEDs, which will form images in front of the eye: words, charts, imagery enabling the wearers to navigate their surroundings whithout distraction or disorientation. The optoelectronics in the lens may be controlled by a seperate device that relays information to the lens’s control circuit. Read the rest of this entry »
The Google Opt Out Feature Lets User protect their privacy by moving to a desolate village where the are guaranteed an environment free from Google products. Participants will expected to know how to grow their own food, heal their wounds and bury corpses by hand.
While this video is a parody, created by the Onion News Network, Google has been facing a lot of privacy concerns both from the US Government and its users. As Google continues to grow, and invade our lives, situations similar to the ones parody might not seem so far fetched and funny?
Related: Google 2084, Google DNA, Google manhole, Googling in physical space, Google pigeons, Behind the Search Engine, Google Kills Bambi.
These dudes from the Spanish TV show El-Hormiguero mixed cornstarch and water made on a concrete mixer truck, effectively creating a pool of non-newtonian fluid – which is almost like normal water, but when stress is applied to the liquid it exhibits properties of a solid.
I don’t think you would have bumped – quite literally in this case – into a such a material in old nature. Well, maybe in a swamp. But that is less fun. Just imagine all the next Olympic sports we could build on this! Hypermaterial of the moment.
Naturally, there is also a Japanese TV version, but I like this non-newtonian fluid scuplture better.
