Tag Archives: #industrialdesign

design applied to products that are to be manufactured through the techniques of mass production

From A Wooden Apple To…

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a useless old computer that started a billion dollar company

Since this is a new blog, I’ve been watching the traffic – mostly in the laughably vain concern that I might begin to approach my throughput limitation (hey, it’s my fantasy, alright) – and this morning discovered a rather interesting visitor had stopped in.

Now before I continue, I should preface this by saying I first read a slew of emails, all RepRap related. Included in one such group email was the confirmation that ABS cylindrical stocks are available and have melt points (~110 C) that make it possible to use this material in that experimental, 4-day-in-the-making, Vik Olliver Meccano effort about which I posted earlier. Having been in the manufacturing side of plastics for years, I can assure you ABS is highly regarded (too often I’ve had to make due with lesser plastics like SAN).

Hence my amusement at a mention by none other than Bruce Sterling on his Wired blog. And while I have nothing to do with the item in question, I do now perhaps have a better understanding of Mr. Sterling – even though I understand the post is intended to poke some fun. Well. Kinda. See, it took four years studying ID before I began to shed my aerospace engineering “blinders” (hey, I got through orbital mechanics mathematics and their painful derivations, but it didn’t make me inventive), and he’s only been at ACCD a few months, I believe. Furthermore, if I recall correctly, he won’t be there much longer. A shame. Hanging around a bunch of students who aren’t polarized into a way of thinking can be liberating… in ways that hanging around experts isn’t. I recall one student in 1992 (now a design firm principal, I believe) having the audacity to suggest handheld cellphone-like devices in ten years! That idiot! If only he’d listened to the impossibility of that development from all the senior instructors and engineers.

Why respond? Maybe because it was all the comments made by people in the late 70’s. “Whut da hell ya need a ‘puter fer? Ah got me a 350 Chevy.” I recall those kinds of comments. I just didn’t expect Bruce Sterling to be the one to pull them from my memory. What a great reminder of how things are. And how I expect them to continue to be, especially in regards to virtual worlds. I was just having this conversation last night with Jerry… in world….

(note: the above image from 8-Bit Nirvana)

And Even More FabLab Stuff….

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The Economist has posted an article from their print edition reminding everyone that Dr. Gershenfeld has been using RP technology to assist those in need for years. I’ll admit having temporarily forgotten. It’s truly a shame that $20k is too much for some developing countries to afford; probably preventing the more widespread use of his collection of devices. I guess that depressing part of the story helped me forget. Isn’t that roughly the cost of a single Smart bomb?

A Second Look at Second Life

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screenshot from Second Life

Since this blog only went “live” yesterday (I’d disabled it’s pingback features until then) I was surprised to see someone outside my small circle of mostly disinterested acquaintances had stopped in to visit. Curious to know who, I paid Setpoint Originator a visit. It appears we have some things in common. More importantly, I noticed the two previous entries concerned Second Life, and so decided to pay a long overdue visit to its homepage and some other related sites. The one that really struck me was this blog entry over on Wonderland. The “Virtual Hallucinations” example reinforces my previous thoughts on Molyneux’s “The Room” experiment in that there are surprising (and perhaps startling) ways to use this technology, and makes me wonder if something similar couldn’t be coded into SL… perhaps the ability to create enclosed environments wherein more dramatic experimentation can take place. Just a thought. But of actually greater interest to me now are some of the virtual economic and social issues transpiring there. Worth a third look…tomorrow after a good night’s rest.

I Kinda Remember That Idea

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image from Wired magazine showing a shake 'n bake emergency shelter

Wired has a cool article on “shake and bake” shelters. I especially like this idea because I volunteered something similar – though not as elegant – during a Rubbermaid R&D conference years ago. And this one is so much better since it’s intended for humanitarian aid and uses natural materials. Excellent example of what ID does best.

The Anti-Sony

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C|Net is carrying an interesting article on Samsung. I seem to recall Samsung on a design hiring spree around 1997 – forming a partnership with a well-known design firm (whose name escapes me at the moment) and setting up studios to help them develop the kinds of products needed to…well…kick Sony’s ass. Looks like that effort, doubtlessly part of a much larger strategy, has worked.

This success does, however, pose a problem for me. The speculation is that Sony stumbled in part because they were attempting to protect their entertainment division. Even if someone dreamed up an iPod before Apple, when a company owns content, they’re naturally going to be hesitant to develop products which facilitate its theft. Before they got into the media business, they doubtlessly had little concern about the effects their Walkmans or VCR’s would have on the entertainment industry.

The problem now, for content creators, is that a lesson is being learned in corporate boardrooms everywhere; that lesson being: forget protecting content. For designers looking more and more at creating content as options to the declining job market in the West (as it moves to low-cost Asian countries), this does not bode well. And in the long run, it doesn’t bode well for the public who thinks nothing of stealing music and movies. That is unless Westerners are prepared to watch subtitled movies and listen to foreign-language pop songs.

I can just see redneck Bubba, dressed in his Indian-made Western clothes, listening to Filipino singers covering Hank Williams tunes on his Taiwanese radio driving his Japanese truck to his job at the Chinese buffet. Just hope he likes Tsingtao beer.