Insights 6.10

Design:

• Jon Christian on the machismo-soaked design and branding of 'prepper' subscription boxes, allegedly built for a variety of survival situations, but boiling down to more or less a parade of knives peppered with the odd Geiger counter gizmo or first aid supplies. 
• An argument that Everlane, Patagonia, and similar brands are symbolic of a social trend towards greater collaboration and group adhesion in pursuit of larger goals, rather than mere conformism. 

Building Things: 

• IKEA is working to begin production of plastic goods made from vegetable oil derived polymers.
• A fascinating look at the current state of prefabricated housing, and how various labor and market forces are coming together to make the economics appealing enough to incite the formation of new companies pursuing the modular approach to housing, with commensurate amounts of venture capital fueling their operations. 

Shaping Cities: 

• Golfing as a past-time is undergoing a precipitous decline, shedding millions of regular practitioners over the last decade or so. One impact of that decline is an increase in available, desirable land near small towns and suburbs, and developers are taking note, buying up discounted tracts of land carved up from larger golf courses.  

Communication: 

• Studying the role of social media, and the practice of DIY live coverage of political events or actions like Occupy Wall Street. 

Bias and Brains: 

• After GitHub's acquisition by Microsoft, there has been some renewed discussion on the good or bad of using an individual's GitHub profile as a portfolio or résumé proxy. Detractors point out that making the kind of significant contributions to open source software projects that would catch the eye of a recruiter require time and energy that struggling people can scarcely afford, while proponents claim that the GitHub portfolio tactic is more meritocratic than relying on internships and prestigious gigs that can easily come from simply being born into the right network.

More next week. 

Insights 6.04

 Design:

• A 3D printed adapter for connecting a telephoto zoom lens to a Game Boy camera. While on its face it seems like an absurd little design project, it highlights how broad availability of 3D printing along with some fairly basic CAD skills can enable the creation of objects that bridge the gaps in technology odds-and-ends that we accumulate over time, extending their useful lives. 

Data Logging: 

• A malware attack on the Atlanta Police Department allegedly destroyed years of dashcam footage, which could compromise pending cases.

Designing Space: 

• Mapping how much, and how frequently the spaces within a family home are used. The study showed a large portion the spaces within U.S. households are basically unused, with whole rooms acting more as a storage locker or shrine to possessions than living space. 

Machines for Moving: 

• A Tesla car (while being controlled by self-driving features) crashed into another vehicle, in nearly the exact same spot as another self-driving Tesla accident occurred last year.
• The self-driving car company, Waymo, is purchasing over 60,000 hybrid minivans to add to their fleet, potentially setting them up to absorb a massive chunk of the environmental tax credits set aside for people or companies that purchase hybrid or electric vehicles.

Communication: 

• A very cool little project from Tim Hwang that sends you a different obscure trade journal once per quarter. It's a nice, oblique strategy for counteracting the media-consumption or industry bubbles we all often find ourselves in, and reveling in the joy of knowledge for knowledge sake. 
• Internet memes emerge, spread rapidly, grow shopworn, and then fade into the ether. That process has become more frenetically paced, and formerly reliable efforts to turn memes into money through merchandizing are falling behind, unable to keep up with the speed of meaning being made and re-made, minute to minute. 
• When celebrities, or celebrity-like CEOs send out public missives to their millions of followers, the more fervent fringes of their fanbase often self-mobilize, lashing out at critics on behalf of the stars they admire. Luke O'Neill looks at one recent example from Elon Musk's negative comments on the media, and individual reporters. Social media platforms like Twitter are horrible for the very same reasons they are good: they allow for the temporary collapse of space between the nobody and the somebody. At its best, it helps brilliant people toiling in obscurity to suddenly become known, at its worst it ferments mobs and crystallizes hate that can be targeted, laser-like, on unsuspecting victims.

More next week. 

Insights 5.29

Design:

• How food trucks are structured.
• If you can ignore the bougie-materialistic pretension from the author in this piece on the Apple Watch with Jony Ive, there's a few interesting details that make it worth the read, like the fact that Apple used outside consultants during that product's development. The author wrongly states that this was "one of the first and only times" the company did so (Apple famously worked with frog founder Hartmut Esslinger, as well as IDEO). While it's true that Apple uses external design consultants far less than their hardware peers, the organization has a history of bringing in outside perspectives when digging into a brand new product line. 

Energy: 

• Cryptocurrency mining, and the power demands it generates, is having a significant impact on how utility companies operate and plan for the future. 

Roadmapping the Future: 

• Ingrid Burrington with an examination of the various mappings of the internet. From Google's nearly all-seeing photos of streets, to Facebook's ability to capture complex webs of relationships with the likes and status updates of its human nodes, it is almost impossible to escape being on the radar. Burrington calls for something other than quiet acquiescence to the maps imposed on whole civilizations by technology companies optimizing for their own profit. Burrington concludes the piece with a saboteur's call to arms: to escape the snares of malignant mapping will require outright monkeywrenching, inserting a mess of glitches and false patches of information in an attempt to re-draw the maps and create a new kind of terra incognita. 

Up in the Air:  

• A new type of spacecraft, designed to capture and collect space debris is in the process of being deployed for initial testing. 
• Commercial drones grow more and more capable: a startup called Volans-i is building UAVs  that can carry 20 lbs. up to 500 miles.  

Machines for Moving:  

• Looking back at the outrage and wild fears about the introduction of bike-sharing stations in New York City. 

Material Culture:  

• For tradespeople, removing wedding bands at the beginning the day (or never wearing them at all) has long been the norm due to risk of catastrophic wounds when that tiny piece of metal comes into contact with machine tools or high voltage power. The increased popularity of powerlifting, rock climbing, and training regimens like CrossFit have brought similar concerns to the fore for white collar workers with athletically ambitious leisure pursuits. Kevin Purdy at the product review site Wirecutter writes a bit about the trend of silicone rings as a solution, and the relatively nascent aesthetic standards and considerations. The post is a reminder that as much technology has changed how we live, in the materials that surround us day-to-day, we remain beholden to styles and manufacturing techniques that are nearly ancient, rather than hurtling towards the kind of hectic amalgamation of gear imagined in cyberpunk novels of decades past. 

 

More next week.