MetaFilter posts tagged with design and technology

transcendental numbers rumble in the technium

kliuless — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 08:00:48 -0800

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]

Analog Art (mostly)

Miko — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:33:25 -0800

The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies

People doing strange things with electricity

funkiwan — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:59:04 -0800

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! The NYC meetings (first Wednesday of the month) are very casual and draw an eclectic range of presenters. A great mix of software and hardware mixed with various artistic influences. Would love to hear how they are run in other cities if anyone's been.

Zed's zero carbon, baby: hydrogen-cell motorbikes

nthdegx — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:58:29 -0800

If hydrogen-cell cars are no good, how about hydrogen-cell motorbikes!

Interactive Architecture

desjardins — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:32:13 -0800

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.

Waiting for Apple to develop the iPileOfSeeds

CrunchyFrog — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:34:09 -0800

Chris Woebken is a designer, with some interesting "what if" technology ideas, including a nanotech computer interface and an ultra-thin electronic picture frame.

"When I push on the ball of my foot, it rotates the wrist."

kliuless — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:51:58 -0800

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."

A Genetic Basis for 'Race'

kliuless — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:40:09 -0800

'Race' graphically illustrated - "most Europeans" vs. Ashkenazim (previously; see also IQ & Gladwell, viz. ;) In the words of Ernest Gellner, however, I'd stress that:

...The variety of human societies is staggering. This diversity is not explicable genetically. The nature and extent of the contribution of genetic make-up to social forms is a contentious and unsettled issue, bedevilled by its political associations and implications. What is obvious, however, is that a very large part of the explanation of the form human societies assume must be social-historical and not genetic. This is obvious from the fact that populations which can be safely assumed to remain genetically identical, or very nearly so, can and do assume totally different social forms at different times. Very often, social change is simply far too rapid to be explicable by genetic change. To say all this is not to say that genetic constitution makes no contribution whatever to history. It is conceivable that some genetic constitutions have a greater predisposition to some social forms than others. The issue is difficult...

also see "Let 1,000 genomes bloom," cf. [and btw...] cheers!

"Something — something — happens every election.”

Miko — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 06:51:55 -0800

“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.

limits

kliuless — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:09:35 -0800

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

Where design and technology intersect

bijou — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 13:40:27 -0800

Fashion for the 21st century

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.

acro — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:18:39 -0800

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.

They know what you're thinking!

AVandalay — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 11:15:23 -0800

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.

Laser Furniture

Riovanes — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 21:09:47 -0800

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)

History Of The Button

jack_mo — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 11:42:31 -0800

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.

TED talks, give it a listen.

sixacross — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 04:23:59 -0800

TED talks is a collection of presentations given at the most recent installment of the annual convention of leading technologists, entertainers, and designers (prev iously). 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

"An industrial designer in today's business world should be a business man, an engineer and a stylist, and in that direct order."

blahblahblah — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 11:59:18 -0800

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."

Good Web Design

Tlogmer — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 16:05:36 -0800

Good Web Design

Bugatti Veyron: Concorde of cars?

nthdegx — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 01:38:37 -0800

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.

eHub

tpl1212 — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 06:20:06 -0800

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)

Well, you know, we all want to change the world.

Fourmyle — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:47:21 -0800

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.

Why the iPod looks clean.

Tlogmer — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 21:17:53 -0800

Why does the iPod look so clean?

Technology, Entertainment, and Design

Tlogmer — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 21:19:13 -0800

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)

iPod Coffee Table

haasim — Tue, 24 May 2005 09:47:02 -0800

iPod Coffee Table created by a Toronto design student

A history of the GUI

madamjujujive — Sat, 07 May 2005 21:09:46 -0800

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)