Extropy
How did life arise? What is information? In his recent dispatches from The Technium, Kevin Kelly would say extropy (cf. negentropy & Prigogine). [previously 1|2]
posted by kliuless on Sep 20, 2009 - 70 comments

The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies
posted by Miko on Jul 2, 2009 - 38 comments

Dorkbot is a "monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/whatever), designers, engineers, students, scientists, and other interested parties who are involved in the creative use of electricity." Started in NYC in 2000 by Douglas Repetto, Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center as well as one of Wired's 10 Sexiest Geeks, there are now dozens all over the world. Past presenters have been featured here on the blue. For instance Jeff Han presented his multi-touch interface at dorkbot-nyc in April of 2006. Miru Kim presented her naked city spleen at dorkbot-nyc in October of 2006. Bummed that there's not one in your own city? Start your own! [more inside]
posted by funkiwan on Dec 30, 2008 - 19 comments

If hydrogen-cell cars are no good, how about hydrogen-cell motorbikes!
posted by nthdegx on May 14, 2008 - 22 comments

Interactive Architecture is for both geeks and design freaks. Lots of interesting and WTF stuff here, like SandScapes, Funky Forests, Swarming Structures, Colour Responsive Chairs, and Jelly Architecture. Not to mention the amazing Touch, a tower with 4200 windows equipped with RGB color LEDs that can be controlled by passersby.
posted by desjardins on Apr 26, 2008 - 2 comments

Chris Woebken is a designer, with some interesting "what if" technology ideas, including a nanotech computer interface and an ultra-thin electronic picture frame.
posted by CrunchyFrog on Feb 26, 2008 - 15 comments

Dean Kamen's Artificial "Luke" Arm - Segway inventor reinvents the prosthetic arm: "I've been able to do stuff with this that I haven't, seriously haven't, done in 26 years... uh, pick up a banana, peel a banana and eat it without it squishening... I can't wait to get one of these in a real environment, a home environment, and actually my wife can't either. She's going, oh yeah, I got lots of stuff for you to do."
posted by kliuless on Feb 19, 2008 - 59 comments

'Race' graphically illustrated - "most Europeans" vs. Ashkenazim (previously; see also IQ & Gladwell, viz. ;) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Jan 23, 2008 - 101 comments

“I’m an old computer nerd,” Diener said. “I can do anything with computers. Nothing’s wrong with computers. But this is the worst way to run an election.” NYTMag piece on electronic voting, voter confidence, and the impact of old-fashioned problems like printer jams, befuddled voters and volunteers, and interface design flaws. By Clive Thompson.
posted by Miko on Jan 5, 2008 - 46 comments

The dangers of living in a zero-sum world economy - naked capitalism reprints (with added commentary) an FT article by Martin Wolf on why it's vital for (civilised) society to sustain a 'positive-sum' world, otherwise: "A zero-sum economy leads, inevitably, to repression at home and plunder abroad." Wolf's solution? "The condition for success is successful investment in human ingenuity." Of course! Some are calling for more socialism, while others would press on to build more megaprojects. For me, at least part of the solution lies in environmental accounting and natural capitalism :P
posted by kliuless on Dec 19, 2007 - 42 comments

Fashion for the 21st century
posted by bijou on Aug 19, 2007 - 13 comments

The Flow, by Paul Myerscough

That image gives way, quickly and successively, to a series of others: a young black woman smoking, smiling at the camera through a reinforced glass window; three teenage girls in a car, laughing, filmed through the windscreen; a whip-pan to the American flag, pierced by sunlight, drifting in the breeze; a DIY programme on a pixellated TV screen; a ride-along shot of a family in an oversized golf buggy; two different angles of a man alone in a lecture theatre; two more of traffic at night; a woman, suspicious of the camera, wearing a polka-dot dress and partly obscured by glassy reflections; a blurry shot of a long windowless corridor; a man wearing shades in a crowded street; a woman pursued down the cosmetics aisle of a supermarket; and, as Curtis comes to the end of his three short sentences, a woman seen jogging in the wing-mirror of a moving car. The entire sequence takes 26 seconds. There’s too much to take in. Or, you don’t know what you’ve taken in, and how deep the impression has been.

posted by acro on Jun 20, 2007 - 18 comments

Sites that know what you want before you do The web is transforming from a paradigm of self-orchestrated searching to a world in which your shopping cart is full before you login.
posted by AVandalay on Nov 20, 2006 - 43 comments

Sketch Furniture, aka Furniture Made With Frickin' Lasers. Swedish designers use motion capture technology to draw chairs and tables with light in mid-air. Their sketches are then built out of plastic by a laser into real pieces of furniture. Honestly, either one of these things would amaze me. I'm starting to like living in the future. (via bb)
posted by Riovanes on Nov 1, 2006 - 23 comments

History of the Button, a weblog devoted to 'tracing the history of interaction design through the history of the button, from flashlights to websites and beyond'. This presentation [4.5MB .pdf] provides a quick-fire pictorial history of the things we push to do stuff.
posted by jack_mo on Sep 22, 2006 - 12 comments

TED talks is a collection of presentations given at the most recent installment of the annual convention of leading technologists, entertainers, and designers (previously). From the $100 laptop to the eradication of smallpoxto new ways of visualizing data and a charming and humorous look at education, there's a lot to chew on and more to come. Inspired yet? here's some more reading material. via
posted by sixacross on Aug 3, 2006 - 8 comments

Brooks Stevens, the man who once said, "there is nothing more aerodynamic than a wiener," created the iconic Wienermobile , but was also responsible for many other innovations in industrial design. He put the first window in a clothes dryer, built a land-yacht and streamlined train, developed an important precursor to the SUV, and designed the wide-mouth peanut butter jar and an aerodynamic vacuum cleaner. More lastingly, he also created the idea of planned obsolescence, the "desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary."
posted by blahblahblah on Aug 2, 2006 - 31 comments

Good Web Design
posted by Tlogmer on Feb 10, 2006 - 96 comments

The Bugatti Veyron, according to Jeremy Clarkson on last night's Top Gear, may well be the Concorde of cars. So Clarkson is a man prone to hyperbole, but this time the facts might just back him up. A throw-away remark from VW boss Ferdinand Piëch became the informal design brief. A 1000 horsepower car capable of the north side of 400kph/250mph. It looks futuristic, but has the stats to match. 0-60mph in 2.5 seconds. In an acceleration race with a McLaren F1 (the previous fastest supercar), the Veyron can give the F1 a head-start to 120mph, but will still beat it to 200mph. At 250mph, the 100 litre fuel tank will empty in 12 minutes, and you can brake to stand-still in just ten seconds (albeit covering the length of four football pitches in the process). The car will set you back most of UK £1,000,000 but that's barely an indicator: the few that exist are being sold at loss because they "just wanted to see if they could". With an industry facing shifting priorities, there may never be another super-car quite like this.
posted by nthdegx on Dec 12, 2005 - 77 comments

Web 2.0 overload - "eHub is a constantly updated list of web applications, services, resources, blogs or sites with a focus on next generation web (web 2.0), social software, blogging, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, location mapping, open source, folksonomy, design and digital media sharing." Tons of links to mashup apps like PervWatch, Podomatic, ThinkFree, etc, etc, etc...(note: a lot of these sites are in beta)
posted by tpl1212 on Sep 30, 2005 - 41 comments

You say you want a Revolution? This morning at the Tokyo Game Show, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata unveiled the unique controller for the company's upcoming video game console, code named Revolution. Legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto demonstrated the device to the press with a series of hands-on demos. While no full games have yet been shown on the system, the controller offers many possibilities for novel, accessible, and compelling game experiences.
posted by Fourmyle on Sep 15, 2005 - 73 comments

Why does the iPod look so clean?
posted by Tlogmer on Sep 13, 2005 - 53 comments

TED UK
(click through to What is Ted : About Ted : Highlights. You'd think a conference with Freemon Dyson speaking could afford a decent web designer)
posted by Tlogmer on Jul 25, 2005 - 5 comments

iPod Coffee Table created by a Toronto design student
posted by haasim on May 24, 2005 - 30 comments

A history of the GUI from the 1930s through the 90s. Also see Vannevar Bush's visionary 1945 essay As we May Think, which helped to set the wheels in motion. (Check out the Ars Technica discussion for good related links and commentary.) (via The Sideshow)
posted by madamjujujive on May 7, 2005 - 15 comments

Resources for lighting designers and enthusiasts: The Lighting Wiki; [extensive] Glossary of Lighting Terminology (and another); Lighting Design Resources (inc. "Fun with Light"; and Professional Lighting Resources.
posted by nthdegx on Feb 16, 2005 - 4 comments

We Make Money Not Art :: art meets science and technology in the near near future and begets some cool and scary toys.
posted by anastasiav on Jan 27, 2005 - 4 comments

The Vos Pas is an apartment that it's owner has lit entirely with LEDs. More here.
posted by ukamikanasi on Jan 10, 2004 - 18 comments

Mitsubishi Virtual Design Museum - look at the past, present, and future of industrial design in Japan. :: via Yesterday's Tomorrows::
posted by anastasiav on Dec 8, 2003 - 8 comments

Client: "People don't know what links are on the web yet, you have to make it blink and say 'CLICK HERE!' " Web designer horror stories from the last days of the dotcom boom. (via the Spinnoff forums)
posted by UKnowForKids on Nov 19, 2003 - 50 comments

Lick Me, I'm A Mackintosh. One columnist's ode/rant re: Apple's design ethos.
posted by serafinapekkala on Oct 1, 2003 - 122 comments

Scaled Composites unveils a privately built spacecraft Could this be the leapfrog event that all of us sci-fi fans have been waiting for? If successful he will open up space for organizations other than the worlds most wealthy governments. Warp speed Mr. Sulu! (sorry getting a little carried away).
posted by canucklehead on Apr 20, 2003 - 11 comments

Zeldman likes it. Jakob isn't saying, though he'll probably weigh in. mathowie'll probably like it since he seems to dig those Adaptive Path guys. It's elegant, it's like a pleased-with-itself polar bear, it's the AIfIA and there are probably more than 25 reasons it's a Good Thing.
posted by jburka on Nov 4, 2002 - 35 comments

A new temple for new technology (NY Times). The digital arts organization Eyebeam have chosen a design by the web-savvy firm of Diller+Scofidio to build their new Museum of Art and Technology, from a shortlist of thirteen. Any thoughts on architecture for new media? And iMac-colored buildings?
posted by liam on Mar 21, 2002 - 4 comments

See-through electronics as prison-chic [NYTimes link] The see-through iMac and other transluscent and transparent appliances turn out to have a practical uses in at least one segment of the population.
posted by idiolect on May 14, 2001 - 4 comments

ConceptPC @ Intel - pretty much interesting...response from PCs to iMac-mania?....gimme a MagicBean!! (flash required)
posted by candida on Dec 16, 2000 - 7 comments

These sliding menus may not be anything much to you design mavens out there, but to a simple engineer/management consultant like myself, they are addictively neat. Whenever I check out the site, I find myself pulling them out and playing with them while deciding where to go in the site. How'd they do that?
posted by fpatrick on Jul 28, 2000 - 9 comments

If the Roger Black rant thread has aroused your curiosity, you may want to check out Michael Wolff's profile of Black that ran in New York magazine last fall. It covers the print world more than the web, but it explains the (quite real) Roger Black mystique in greater detal.
posted by werty on Apr 25, 2000 - 0 comments