Developers of technology pursue efficiency relentlessly. This is done for a variety of reasons: Efficiency is readily quantified and lends itself to comparison between designs; a preference for efficiency seems simply rational (who wouldn't prefer a more efficient car over a less efficient one?); increases in efficiency increase sustainability.
Posts in this blog sometimes relate to a some design and pose the question, "Is this a gimmick?" A recent example concerned a speaker-battery combination pack for electric bikes.
One of the most famous dictums associated with Modernist design is that "Form follows function." Typically, what modernists mean by this expression is that the design of a product should be dictated by the job it is to perform for users—and nothing else!
However, Modernists tended to take a narrow view of what a function is. In their view, this was limited to physical services that a product might perform for its users.
Amazon Canada got into some trouble recently when it was found that a vendor was using its web service to sell doormats decorated with the Indian flag. India's external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj was alerted to the matter by vigilant Twitter users, who consider this usage an insult to their national flag.
Emma Tucker at Dezeen writes about a new feature of the "Angel" electric bicycle by Noordung. The Angel is a high-end electric bike clearly meant to appeal to an exclusive market, at the exclusive price of €9,760 each.
When you hear the term alcohol patch, what do you think of? An imaginary place more adult than the Cabbage Patch? Wrong! A patch that slowly releases alcohol into your bloodstream? Getting warmer!
As Mike Hanlon describes it in New Atlas, the ONUSblue alcohol patch is a sensor that rests on a person's skin and monitors their blood alcohol level:
Logan Koepke has written an interesting article at Slate about the nature of predictive policing. Predictive policing involves the use of computer algorithms to assign police coverage to a given region on the basis of anticipated risk of crime.
One theme raised in our STV 202 class is that acquisition of information may precede practical knowledge of what to do with that information. This issue is especially noticeable in health, where it has become very easy to track people's vital statistics but not so easy to know how to use the results to benefit them.
Think of any commercial fitness tracker you can name.
An interesting article by Alice Hopton on CBC news discusses when people might be required to do without their smartphones.
The article describes Yondr, a small pouch in which smartphones may be locked during concerts, classes, and other social gatherings. Yondr's inventor, Graham Dugoni, argues that some people's habit of recording concerts, rather than just experiencing them unfiltered, undermines the point of such events, which is:
Andy Greenberg at Wired points out an interesting project by one Julian Oliver: A printer that highjacks cell phone traffic. You may have heard of the StingRay, a device used by police (among others) that intercepts cell phone traffic by spoofing a legitimate cell phone tower. Well, Mr.