I am currently looking into car-free planning - an urban planning and architecture “movement” that focuses on preventing people from using cars in different ways. Car-free days and zones is a fairly new phenomenon.
MIT alum Eric Brende’s book Better Off addresses the topic: What would life be without technology? His answer to the question is reviled in the book’s title. Eric describes the advantages of de-technologizing in the following way:
The very absence of technology is a catalyst for close bonds among neighbors, for several reasons simultaneously. In a real sense you depend upon your neighbor, especially in times of crisis, but also because the work is by its nature communal. People get together not just because they like each other, but because they need each other. There’s a strong incentive not to sweat the small stuff.
Just found out that OB tampons (the ones that I used for last week’s assignment) contain polyester. Among other things, polyester is used to make: bottles, films, tarpaulin, liquid crystal displays, holograms, filters, dielectric film for capacitors, film insulation for wire and insulating tapes. You can read more about polyester here.
According to Urban Dictionary, detechnologizing means:
The act of removing one’s technology (i.e. iPod, cell phone) from one’s pockets before riding a roller coaster.
I found this week’s test really hard. I don’t know why, but I suppose I may have taken the task too seriously. So, somewhere in the process I realized that in order to get anything made at all, I have to do something completely unexpected and wacky (maybe).
This, sort of artistic, material exploration session was inspired by survival expert Bear Grylls. Bear’s advice that tampons are great for making fires (featured on the Oprah Winfrey show earlier this year) made me curious (and scared) enough to put tampons to the test. If you want to see the whole interview on Oprah, with more survival tips, you can watch it here.
For now, find below, a series of burning tampons, both “natural” and “augmented”.
Natural:
Natural - ripped open:
Sprayed with regular hairspray:
Dipped in red wine vinegar (no reaction):
Dipped in alcohol:
This is a comment on Ivan Illich book Tools for Conviviality (1973). In his book, Illich focuses three topics:
The prophetic aspects of Illich’s text are inspiring. Illich is talking about issues that we know and discuss today, but probably were not that obvious in the 70’s. He criticizes deconstructive forces that burden the postmodern society, where more wants more and solutions cause new problems, and asks for more sustainable solutions. He mentions problems such as energy consuption and the well-being of individual citizens.
The third topic in Illich’s text (mentioned above), the regain of individual and independent power, knowledge and development, makes me think of an old meditation movement called Mindfulness. Mindfulness was brought to the Western academic world by, among others, Ellen J. Langer (Harvard University), who desribes Mindlessness (the opposite of Mindfulness) as:
It is about the mindsets that lead human beings—even the smartest of them—to become stupid and ‘mindless.’ Its power as drama in demonstrating that mindlessness leads not only to the banality of dullness, but to a giving up of life itself.
Ellen Langer’s desription of mindless people makes me think of Illich critic on institutionalisation of societies and their machine-like (mindless) citizens. Surely, there must be a connection there. Personally, I would argue that the life that I have lead so far, as a grown-up (the life that I to some extent is trying to move away from) to a large extent has made me a less independent, less creative, and less mindful person.
I just found this cute video of a play-doh video control.
Play-Doh as Interface from BrendanDawes on Vimeo.
You can read the designer’s comment here.
This playdough was made based on instructions that can be found on the Instructables website. Playdough (a.k.a Play-doh) is a non-toxic dough that has been sold as a children’s toy since the 50’s. The recipe is a trade secret, but playdough is primarily a mixture of wheat flour, water, deodorized kerosene or another petroleum distillate (which provides the smooth texture), salt, a drying agent such as borax (which deters mold), an alum-based hardening agent, and colorings and perfume (Wikipedia). The instructions that I chose to follow recommended the following recipe:
Basic ingredient ratios:
2 cups flour
2 cups warm water
1 cup salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon cream of tartar (optional for improved elasticity)
food coloring
vanilla
The main trick is to heat the dough mix long enough in order to get the right, thick and elastic texture. It takes about 5-10 minutes. Apparently, the dough lasts longer if you use mineral oil rather than vegetable oil in the mixture.
After I made the multi-colored playdough, I felt like exploring and learning even more, so I decided to make a short stop motion (frame-by-frame) movie. There are plenty of instruction on how to make your own stop motion movie online. I used my own digital camera to take photos of the clay figures and used Windows Movie Maker to put the images together. I named the movie Making clay dance (note: my roomie in the background):
This is a comment to Peter B. Meyer’s paper Episodes of Collective Invention.
I find the discussion regarding incentives for sharing knowledge and inventions the most interesting one. If you think that you have a really good idea, why on earth would you want to make it publicly available?The paper shows that there are many possible reasons; uncertainty and fame being two.
I’d say that in general, people will only use open source (or any other approach) if that benefits them somehow - short-term or long-term. Meyer claims that open source is only useful and beneficial within uncertain fields, i.e. fields that have an uncertain future or evolution. That is when you need collective creation and development, as well as diversity and multitude.
I am fascinated by the roles of fame and respect. The Media Lab has a long history helpfulness and open source; send out an email with a question and you’ll most likely receive at least a couple of answers. I wonder what drives people to help others succeed? Apart from the fact that direct reciprocity may benefit these people (students exchange ideas and solutions with each other), it may actually also be that they strive for recognition and admiration. They are working their way up in the hierarchy of knowledge and wisdom.
The video below shows Paulina as she is taking apart a standard Rubik’s cube. During her exploration, Paulina found out that when it comes to Rubik’s cubes it is fairly easy to disassemble the cube, but it is extremely important that you do it in the right way:
To pull apart the Rubik’s cube, put it on a hard flat surface. With a thin blunt instrument such as a medium sized flathead screwdriver (don’t use a knife or any other sharp instrument), gently work the screw driver into the gap directly above one of the centre spindles - don’t try this on a corner, or it will snap. When the screwdriver is in a few millimetres, gently lever the so the edge piece is slowly forced up. The piece should suddenly pop up, but don’t press too hard. With this piece removed, all the remaining pieces can be slid out.
It took Paulina approx. five minutes to remove all the pieces, which, as you probably can understand, is not much of a record.
Some useless facts: