Posts Tagged ‘Technology’

E3 Most Anticipated Major Announcements

June 1, 2012

E3The biggest video game announcements of the year are just days away! Each year at the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo, top game developers show off their upcoming games and systems, hosting huge press conferences to get us excited about their new titles and start us pining away for a chance to play them ourselves. iPad and iPhone owners can experience it for themselves courtesy of the free Official E3 2012 App, which will bring the news directly to you. Additionally, the major console makers will each be streaming their press conferences on the web, so we’ve picked out the biggest announcement expected at each and rounded up the links below.
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by in Tech

An Emergent Syntax of Stuff

August 17, 2011
This image of a table full of outdated cell phones is brought to you by Octa, creators of the Whale Kit iPad stand.

(Photo Courtesy of Dave Patten)

In the 2006 comedy Idiocracy, Mike Judge depicts the Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505. That falling mass is almost certainly full of original iPads, first generation iPods, and antiquated iPhones, along with device-specific chargers and trashed FM transmitters. Technological advances have their costs. More pernicious than the stylized movie threats of new weapons or rampaging dinosaur clones, we face a not-so-subtle and advancing threat: the exponential growth of stuff.

This is the environmental impact of planned obsolescence, or the design practice of deliberately providing a product with a limited useful life.  Items are created with intentional shortcomings to force users to make ancillary purchases.  It’s no surprise that the sale of consumer electronics accessories represents $10 billion in annual revenue.  Most consumers plan to use their accessories for a few years, but when the form factor, or geometry of a product, shifts from generation to generation—common among smartphones—accessory purchases may become more regular.  Think of all those dead dongles: DisplayPorts replaced by Mini DisplayPorts, FireWire replaced by Thunderbolt. (more…)

by in Evolution

Biomimicry and the Design Revolution: the New Intelligence

August 3, 2011

This photo is of artist Theo Jansen’s Rhinoceros and is brought to you by Octa, creators of the Whale Kit iPad Handle.

Humankind has a proud history of developing technology.  Defined by the Greeks as technologia, it is the creation and use of tools, techniques, crafts and systems in order to solve problems or affect purposes.  As soon as we humans recognized our mortality, we began using fire, clothing, and farming to distance ourselves from the vicissitudes of nature.

In the quest for comfort and material security, our species spent thousands of years separating itself from nature.  Now designers are looking back to the natural world out of reverence for its evolutionary intelligence.  Nature, it turns out, already has the solutions to many of our problems. (more…)

by in Evolution