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November 18 2011
Afterlife for Atheists
Where religions promise their believers a life after death and cryonics also needs a kind of belief in future technological development, designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau are working on a project providing reassurance on life after death.
After death the human body is assimilated back to its basic building blocks: the elements. The Afterlife concept intervenes in this process by saving the energy that is released during the assimilation. This energy is contained in an ordinary dry cell battery which can be used according to the last wishes of the deceased.
To evaluate the project, Auger and Loizeau asked people what they would want to do with the memorial energy provided by their deceased self, partner or family. One person answered, for instance, he would like to realise his dream to fly and a couple answered they would use the energy of the death partner for a suicide machine that can be used when the period of mourning is too much to handle.
Click here to view the embedded video.
The Afterlife project is exhibited until the 26th of Februari 2012 at the “New Energy in Art and Design” exposition in the Van Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Picture and movie via Auger-Loizeau
August 29 2011
Ghosts with Shit Jobs
Click here to view the embedded video.
This trailer for the mockumentary Ghost With Shit Jobs shows a could-be-future in which the role of the West and the East is reversed. Very good timing I would say.
More on: ghostswithshitjobs.com. Via NRC Next
June 28 2011
Get Vegetarian Teeth and Eat Less Meat
Want to live a greener life? Eat less meat. Recently the UN appealed for a radical shift in diet, to improve individual health and ease conditions affecting the global environment. Reducing meat consumption by 10% reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
Unfortunately, humans are omnivores. Our teeth are designed to eat both meat and plants. Susana Soares and her colleagues designers and engineers of the Material Beliefs program propose to alter human teeth structures into those of herbivores, in order to become a better vegetarian.
Teeth are an essential tool for nutrition and their shape is related to diet. Herbivore animals have developed teeth structures suited to the consumption of plant material. Can our teeth structure be replaced to encourage dietary shifts that reflect social concerns?
Soon at a local dentist near you? Perhaps your government will even give you a tax cut for adopting a more sustainable veggy lifestyle? No seriously, this is bio play.
See also: Phone Tooth, Orthorexia Nervosa: the healty eating disorder.
May 22 2011
Humane Technology #6: Improve the Human Condition
And now for the sixth and final principle: Humane technology improves the human condition and helps people realize the dreams they have of themselves.
No matter what your government might be telling you, we probably don’t need better defense technology. Instead of killer robots and city-leveling bombs, we need tech that adds to the very best in ourselves- our health, our minds and our dreams for the future. Naturalist E.O Wilson’s notion of biophilia should not be limited just to humans. Technology should love life as much as we do.
Humane technology, as a concept, can be tricky to pin down. What is humane in one circumstance is irritating or destructive in another. A cell phone may be more humane than a landline, permitting the talker to wander around, free to conduct business or call home from the far side of the globe. But cell phones may be inhumane for precisely this reason. A Blackberry or iPhone can seem less like an indispensable fifth limb than a second mouth that just won’t shut up. A technology can never defined as entirely humane or entirely inhumane. There is no end point that makes a certain device ‘humane.’ We may not know it by how it looks, but we will know it by how it feels.
May 13 2011
Humane Technology #3: Take Human Values as a Cornerstone
The third principle of humane technology: It should take human values as a cornerstone of its development.
Technology doesn’t have to be expensive or electronic to be humane. Think of it as the Occam’s Razor of humane technology. The simpler the solution, the better the outcome. For instance, the Hippo Water Roller makes it significantly easier for poor, rural communities to haul water from a lake or river back to their homes. Rolling water, rather than carrying it, reduces stress on the body and frees up time for other tasks. Taking human values into consideration for technology goes beyond basic humanitarian aims. The development of humane tech should consider the fact that any new device will be nested within a rich network of social actors. Designers needs to keep an eye on the societal and environmental ramifications of novel technologies and act accordingly.
See also the LifeStraw, Adaptive Eyewear and the dubiously world-changing One Laptop Per Child. These might not be the most Next Nature-esque technologies we’re featured here, but they’re certainly worth a ponder.
May 11 2011
Humane Technology #1: That Natural Feeling
All too often, technology frustrates us. It forces our behavior into constrained pathways. Even more insidious, technology can knock us out of alignment with our values, goals or health. While conventional tech creates new problems even as it solves old ones, ‘humane technology’ has the opposite effect. It is a partner, not a passive tool. It works with our bodies and instincts, not against them. This post is the first in a series that attempts to make a field guide or mini-manifesto for humane technology. To kick it off, here’s the first principle of the six: Humane technology should feel natural, rather than estranging.
Medicine can be hard to swallow, and vaccine needles makes even the bravest patients squirm. Is there a friendlier way to what’s good for us? Humane technology recognizes that humans are not one-size-fits-all. What works like a charm for you might feel like a curse to me. Humane technology should strive to replicate the walking leaf: so well adapted to the local conditions that you might not even notice, or mind, that it’s there. Just don’t be surprised if your doctor prescribes medical-grade sushi made from GM fish, or uses a painless needle based on a mosquito’s proboscis. The technology behind our advances might be mind-boggling, but the results should feel as natural as our own skin.
May 10 2011
New steps to meld mind and machine
Until now we’ve seen the types of brain-computer interface where the human has to put on some sort of bulky hat full of wires to control a machine. It won’t be like that for long: the future of organic electronics may already be here. In 2009, a team of Swedish scientists created the first artificial nerve cell that communicates with nerves in their own language of neurotransmitter chemicals, rather than with electrical impulses. More recently, another team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison scratched the surface of a new kind of brain-machine interface by wiring computer chips with living nerve cells.
These technologies are radically shifting conventional brain-computer interfaces. Not only can they help people with diseases such as schizophrenia or Parkinson’s, but they also present exciting possibilities for neurotypical humans. For example, such devices could allow you to control the machines around you, and to communicate with them as well. Yes, creepy if it gets hacked. Or here’s another idea: what if you could communicate your thoughts to another person just by thinking? Then it wouldn’t be brain-machine interfaces anymore, but brain-machine-brain interfaces.
Photo: link
March 08 2011
We are all born in a World…
…that has been designed already.
Peculiar baby of the week. Source: Adbusters, via: Masters of Rietveld.
We are all born in a World…
…that has been designed already.
Peculiar baby of the week. Source: Adbusters, via: Masters of Rietveld.
February 03 2011
Disgusting Switches
If a light switch would be hairy or snotty nobody would want to turn on the light anymore, which is exactly why designer Katrin Baumgarten created some of the most one nauseating switches she could imagine.
One of the switches sprays snot at the one who dares to push it, while another one simply retreats when the finger comes near. A third one has tiny moving hairs to refrain you from switching. The message? Be mindful about your energy use. You really have to need the light before you dare switching one of Baumgartens disgusting creations.
The project reminds of the Switch Critters by Hannah Reiger, which have to be persuaded to switch, as well as of of The Button project by Nitipak Samsen, that re-investigates the concept of the button altogether, moving from the button as a symbol of control, an extension of the human desire to harness the planet, to inter-control.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Via Llink. Thanks Emmie.
January 28 2011
Nano Product: Pharmaceutical Sushi
Are we creating the penicillin or the asbestos of the 21st century? Prior to the arrival of the Nano Supermarket, we share some speculative nanotech products with you. Here’s the first in the Nano Supermarket Products series: Pharmaceutical Sushi. Taking medicine becomes a social activity. And it tastes pretty good!
Hello young (wo)man
If you’re in your thirties now, you’re in your fifties by fifteen years. Your life will probably be slightly different than your life as it is now. You might be married, or have some kids going to university. Either way, let’s not speculate too much about that. Instead, let’s stick to something that will undoubtedly be different by that time – your body: your hair has gone slightly thinner and a bit grey, playing football on sundays isn’t that spectacular anymore due to physical constraints and your health in general isn’t wat it used to be.
Bad news for you, because the public health system as existed in some civilised parts of the world around 2010 is gone and won’t come back. Coming from a middle class background you where not very alert on keeping up with all the rapid changes within the public health system and the insurance world, thinking you’ll be allright. Barack Obama, president of the U.S.A from 2009 untill 2013 didn’t get the reformation of the public health system in the U.S.A. through congress and from then, thinks started to worsen in all parts of the world struggling with the financial crises of 2008 and 2013.
Bèta Medicine
So there you are. It’s 2025; cancer is still the no.1 disease to fear, not only in the western world but also in Asia and sub-saharan Africa, your first friends suffer from incontinentia, you start to get a little bit nervous and you’re dramatically under-insured. Now what to do? Your insurance company has the answer. In a letter you receive, your insurance agent makes you a special offer to sign up for a new range of organic medicine, grown in genetically modified fish. The medicine is harvested as fish-eggs and ready for consumption – Pharmaceutical Sushi. However still in bèta, it comes in all variations: Prednison, Prozac, Anticonception, Viagra, Vitamins – anything you or your family members need. Of course you accept the offer. Together with your insurance agent you select a nice family package deal with the pharmaceutical industry mogul in Asia that developed the concept and you sign the life-long contract. Which gets you some extra discount, and a 24-carat lipstick as a bonus.
Your sunday afternoon pharmasushi family lunches are no stand alones. Over the past decade, you’ve witnessed an increasing hybridization of food, technology and medicine. With your chopsticks (that display your calorie consumption by changing color) you pick the last Vitamine ABC Sashimi. Tomorrow it’s monday and you have to go to the office again. Quickly, you take a sip of your Chocolate Flavoured Nano Slim Shake. All set and done.
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PRODUCER: PHARMASUSHI
EXPECTED TO HIT THE SHELVES IN: 2020
PRICE: €35,– PER SET
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