looking at old consumer electronics can make you realize just how far we haven’t come – i just discovered transistor.org, sarah lowrey’s website dedicated to her transistor radio collection. flipping through these vintage audio players you can find a lot of the trends that seem so pervasive today, as well as design ideas we still […]
Category Archives: energy
audio players of the future
Also posted in customization, environment, fabrication, materials, product design
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vending bits
at logan on my way to tokyo i spotted this sony-branded vending machine selling cameras, memory cards and ebook readers. it is a strange experience to see these expensive electronics being commodified and it points out the worrisome disposable nature of these increasingly commonplace material- and resource-intensive products. maybe a more sustainable solution would be […]
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sinister streetlight
i left out something about the solar and wind-powered streetlights at the panasonic center in tokyo: the company sells a modified version that contains a security camera, with the aim of tracking children on their way to and from school. the ‘Neighborhood Security Sensor Network System‘ detects children carrying an active RFID tag and takes […]
Also posted in children, environment, possessed products, product design, surveillance
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spinning streetlights
yesterday i stopped by the panasonic center in tokyo and i saw these graceful solar and wind-powered streetlights – so-called ‘seagulls.’ they generate power during the day, storing it in a battery at the base of the light pole, and illuminate at night while continuing to generate wind power. although it seems unlikely that they […]
Also posted in environment, futurecraft, product design
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photovoltaic payback
with solar panels (once again) the craze, a lot of discussion goes into whether they are truly efficient and whether they do the environment any good. most solar cells require a lot of energy and materials to manufacture, and many do not produce much energy over the course of their lives. under optimal conditions (in […]
Also posted in fabrication, futurecraft, soft/glowing
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green-washing bottles
today i forgot my water bottle and ended up buying one with my lunch, only to discover that poland springs had responded to the fury over bottled water in its own way: by using a new ‘eco-shape’ bottle, made from the same PETG as before, but containing ‘up to 30% less’ of the material. here […]
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rendering opinions
america’s first wind-power project off the coast of cape cod is being fought over renderings. wind-industry-backed (with 61% resident support) cape wind produced a set of renderings of how the offshore wind farm would look from several places on the cape, many of which were used by “grass roots” save our sound, really a minority […]
Also posted in marketing, perception, visualization
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costly disposables
greenpeace is at it again, after successfully bullying apple for its environmental carelessness by ranking it as the worst PC manufacturer in terms of environmental impact (march ’07) and motivating job’s new recycling program, a new greenpeace study reveals the presence of (banned) brominated fire retardants in the iphone – which is leading the state […]
Also posted in marketing, possessed products, product design
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