m1k3y

Let’s avoid the temptation to present this as an authentic design culture of Sarajevo, which for hundreds of years was one of Europe’s most diverse and tolerant cities. It is far from that. Instead, it is the design culture of an aberration, a temporary phenomenon within a historical blip. We are used to praising this kind of ad hoc ingenuity – often rather patronisingly – when we see it in Africa or India, but this was Europe, less than 20 years ago, and these people were not poor. Their money was simply no use to them, just as a Mercedes in a garage is no good without petrol to run it. The rote responses we apply to the developing world don’t work in this instance.

We think of design as one of the planes on which civilisation charts its course, measuring ourselves by our technological achievements and our talent for pleasing forms. But when civilisation breaks down, we resort to a cunning DIY culture with the resultant Mad Max mechanics and none of the Hollywood styling. Naive though some of these objects appear, their worth was weighed in how effective they were. In that sense, they represent a rare thing: a non-consumerist design culture. That’s not to say there was not a market for it – one of those pot-stoves would set you back seven packs of cigarettes if you couldn’t make your own – but this was an alternative economy that had nothing to do with novelty, desire or retail therapy. It was about staying alive.

Anatomy of Change

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

But instead of hovering over disaster and conflict areas, how about urban and rural dead spaces or in even more remote locales? And instead of drones and toy airplanes, you conscript pigeons, starlings and other flying weeds into a wi-fi network of cyborg fauna?

This network needn’t be online all the time. The birds, after all, need some rest. So you simply let them loose, say, during rush hour to temporarily augment the network.

One imagines urban homesteaders converting a water tank into an aviary for their robo-starlings, next to their urban apiaries, urban chicken coops and urban farming tool shed. When they need to communicate with other urban homesteaders, either nearby or in another Detroit-like ruin pornscape, they only need to open the hatch. It’s an artisanal wi-fi for networked off-grid living.

In order to lessen e-waste, each starling is equipped with a homing beacon, which will signal home should the animal die in flight. The homesteader simply has to trace the electronic beeps to collect the carcass and its outfittings. In the meantime, the beacon will be powered by the decaying organic matter.

Pruned: Instant Wi-Fi Cloud of Cyborg Fauna

The Indian Space Research Organization has discovered a massive
underground chamber near the moon’s equator, one that would be perfect
for housing a moon base. A moon base!

Discovered by the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, this chamber is more than
one mile long and 393 feet wide. There would be lots of benefits of
building a moon base in there, mainly for protection from the nastiness
of the surface of the moon. It’d provide a nearly constant temperature
of -4 degrees Fahrenheit, unlike the surface, which fluctuates between
266 degrees and -292 degrees. And it would provide protection from
radiation, micro-meteor impacts and dust.

So, what’s the holdup? Let’s get building! I want to visit a hotel in a moon base sometime in the next 20 years, please!

Giant chamber on the moon discovered, perfect for a future base | DVICE (via eddieatthegov)

The Internet continues to change people’s lives, and lets them connect in new ways, often quicker than companies and governments can respond. Ben Hammersley explained that people with similar interests, cultures and beliefs have more in common than people who live near to each other – what we’ve known as countries – or with our families, and the Internet means they can self-organise. Officials are used to hierarchies (“take the leader out”) not unstructured networks or sheets of people that can instantly reconfigure and change everything from tactics to what they believe in, as we’ve seen with the various protests about tax evasion and student fees in the UK. Ben posited that Governments should spend more time understanding the web – should there be British ambassadors for Wal-Mart and Google rather than the Seychelles? Which has more impact on the UK?

@antimega’s LIFT11 recap http://www.dentsulondon.com/blog/2011/02/28/lift/

howtotalktogirlsatparties:

Oh hey, Murbarak. Nice pinstripes. Wait, what? Oh shit, those pinstripes are actually your name spelled over and over again. You’re a douche, no doubt, but that is some serious despot swag.

bashford:

Manchester Airport’s new T1 projection “Holograms” began service in January 2011 reminding passengers of safety restrictions and to get their passports and boarding cards ready.

“The technology has been developed in conjunction with Musion, and uses a texture that is carefully prepared during manufacture to retain maximum transparency and strength. The resulting surface betters that of a glass mirror, allowing the reproduction of high definition video at such high quality that they look real. So much so that passengers at Manchester Airport have been seen presenting their passports to the holograms!”

Would you like to know more?

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)