1 of 2 posts filed under post digital
The objective of Utanalog by Unfold is to return the iconographic Utah Teapot model to its roots as a piece of functional dishware while showing its status as an icon of the digital world.
1 of 2 posts filed under post digital
“Remember when we had to tell graphic designers that they couldn’t control how things looked online? That the lovely page they’d designed might not look like that on someone else’s computer, in someone else’s browser? Soon we’re going to have to do that with everything. Designers are going to have to design things that might or not get made with the specified materials, in the specified way, to the specified tolerances. They’re going to have to design the idea of an object and let the world make it the way it wants to.”
1 of 2 posts filed under post digital
“The only way to be a Post Digital business is to be a thoroughly, deeply, massively digital one. To be digital in culture not just in capabilities. To know how to iterate in public, to do experiments not research, to recognise that it’s quicker and better to code something than it is to describe it in meetings. You need to be part of the wider digital culture, to have good sharing habits, to give credit where it’s due, and at the very least to know how to do ellipses in Processing.”
— Russell Davies in Post Digital - An Apology.
1 of 2 posts filed under post digital
“In recent years we have witnessed the growth of a new breed of consumer products and services that are a hybrid of tangible atoms and online bits. This exhibition offers a selection of products, demonstrators, videos and art objects that highlight the ways in which online social media now are becoming an important part of the functionality, design and desirability of new products and services. As products and services become increasingly digital and disappear into screens, Hybrids exemplifies some alternative strategies, where some of the magic of the social web seep out into the physical world through tangible things.”
The Hybrids exhibition is a collaboration between Touch and Record project at the Oslo School of Architecture & Design.
1 of 2 posts filed under post digital
Microsoft use a dystopian vision of mobile computing - the problem of glowing rectangles to advertise Windows Phone 7.
Whether or not Windows Phone 7 is actually “a phone to save us from our phones” or not remains to be seen but I definitely think it’s an admirable campaign.
Here’s another video in the campaign.
(via ElasticSpace)
1 of 2 posts filed under post digital
There’s a lot of things Russell Davies covers in this talk that I really really like and I’ve written about some of them before - but the thing I like the most (today) is Russell’s big red button. It’s fantastic. I think what he says about interfaces becoming more and more discreet is so very true and when you frame it up as a bit like we’re trying to pretend we can do this stuff with our mind it’s really quite funny.
If you’ve been following my Twitter stream for any length of time (which I doubt) you’ll have noticed I’ve been collecting become a little bit obsessed with buttons and things out in the real world. Russell Davies’ button is used to control Powerpoint but what I find fascinating is how buttons like this, this, this, this, this, this and these could be connected to the internet or a network to be part of huge distributed interfaces for things that live in the cloud.
1 of 2 posts filed under post digital
Hot off the Presses: The Newspaper Club Produces—and Prints—a Newspaper at SXSW
”The newspapers are passed out and the quiet sound of typing turns to the white noise of paper rustling.” - @mattb
Excellent.
1 of 2 posts filed under post digital
“One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real.”
1 of 2 posts filed under post digital
SXSW Fieldnotes
James Bridle has made a book for the post digital panel at SXSW.
It’s designed to last you the week you’re at SXSW and features maps, a diary, schedule, info pulled from the Lonely Planet guide to Texas and space for you to write notes.
According to James it was:
“Pulled together in a few hours at the last minute despite planning it for ages. HTML -> XML -> InDesign for the talks schedule. Simple PDF resizing for the LP section. Basic-as layout for the rest, with some running heads and page numbers to minimise endless searching. Printed 10 through Lulu – £5 a pop, plus £25 to expedite shipping (because I left it until the last possible moment). Arrived in 4 working days. Done.”
It’s great but I can’t help thinking it could have had more hooks back into the digital domain. I’m not entirely sure what and how but It feels like you should be able to use it as a jumping off point to go and get more content, submit content or communicate with the other owners of the book.
There’s more information on Booktwo.org if you’re interested.
1 of 2 posts filed under post digital
Data Driven Objects
This is a diagram of a brief set by Russell Davies when he visited students at the the AHO Instititute of Design in Oslo last October. It encapsulates so much of what I find exciting about the potential for “post digital” thinking.
Data driven manufacturing. How cool is that?
In the future when we have all these smart objects logging and reporting an infinite amount of data about us and our surroundings as part of The Internet of Things how are we going to view all that information in a way that’s not just graphs and charts behind glass on a screen?
What if you hooked something like Withings or Nike+ up to a ‘fabber’ (3D printer). Something capable of turning digital input into real tangible output? What if you could hook up entire factories to datasets?
Think about it for a bit.
Cool isn’t it?
There’s already Newspaper Club which is allowing people to output to a full newspaper printing press. It’s in beta at the moment but I can’t wait to see what people end up doing with it.
This is a data driven newspaper. It’s a demo of what could be generated using open government data specific to a London postcode.
(Photo by Tom T on Flickr)
I love this work by Svein Inge Bjørkhaug (one of the students at AHO). It uses small wooden blocks to represent the time you spend using applications on your computer. Each week you get these small blocks in the post.
- More time on an application = bigger block.
- More applications = more blocks.
(Photo by jørngeorg on Flickr)
I also love Datadecs by RIG for the same reason. They’re Christmas decorations made from snapshots of data frozen in time and there’s something fascinating about that. It’s almost the opposite of digital photography.
(Photo by Ben Terrett on Flickr)
As you can probably tell I’m completely sold on the concept of “post digital” thinking and I desperately want to do something useful with it. I just hope I get to work on some projects that allow me to think in this way.
If you know anyone…
