In the NYT piece "The Afterlife of Cellphones", Jon Mooallem yesterday wrote about what happened to cell phones after they're discarded. Most of the article deals with methods for recycling and e-waste but the end of it address interesting design concerns of electronic/manufactured objects as it st...
Caring about the future
Going through the last articles of 2007 (in newspapers), I found this interesting "The World of Tomorrow" in the NYT (via the Dr. Fish mailing list). The article describes how on Jan. 1, 1908 (New Year’s Day one century ago), the New York World had a piece called "1808 - 1908 - 2008) about the past...
Phone booths variety
The richness of phone booths (Paraty, Brazil) (Amsterdam, Netherlands) (Lyon, France) (Marseille, France) Please note the different conception of privacy (bubble, box) or how parts of the booth are used in other way (broken glass to seat, to attach a bike, to put ads). What does that say about ...
The necessity of green
Perhaps that's the 2007 trend I find the most important (since we now are in 2008 and can look retrospectively): (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) (Geneva, Switzerland) (Seoul, South Korea) (Lyon, France) All these encounters with fake grass in different parts of the world (over the last year) always ma...
Push To Talk in Brazil
Having spent a little bit of time lately in the Rio de Janeiro area in Brazil, I have been impressed by the quantity of people using Push-To-Talk on their cell phones. A good way to emulate walkie-talkie feature, I've seen mostly used by workers (delivery and taxi people) as well as teenagers. It g...
Multiple taps shower
After the 3-handled tap, here is a four-handled one (Encountered in Paraty, Brazil): 4 handles segregated in 2 positions: one at a regular level and one for giants (for people who "are standing on shoulders of giants"?). However, the 2 above do not work. Any clue? ...
Urban informatics
Adam has an interesting query/blogpost about "what do you feel are the most significant contemporary developments in urban informatics? The most resonant projects, the most powerful interventions, the scariest precedents?". That's quite an important question that I try to ask myself for a while. Si...
Question your tea spoons
A quote by Georges Perec is a good way to start off the year: "What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true...
City legibility and ambient informatics
Reading "City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn" (William J. Mitchell) during the holidays, I ran across that quote: "we are beginning to know and use cities in new ways. Long ago, the urban theorist Kevin Lynch pointed out the fundamental relationship between human cognition and urban form -...
High bench in NYC
A quick glance at Fecal Face always lead to odd encounters. This time the crazy story that piqued my interest was the one of a high bench located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, NYC. 10 feets in the air on metal stilts, this bench led to some head-scratching. Photos of the sculpture installat...