Feb 9, 10
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Why Our Bright Green Futures Will Be Weirder Than We Think
I've been thinking about how weird the future is getting. One of the most creatively interesting aspects of zero impact as a goal is the way in which it transforms our understanding of many of the "solutions" now on the table. When we see our goal as eliminating our ecological impact -- or at least eliminating any impact beyond a globally equitable share of the total impact the planet can absorb (for climate, that appears to work out to about one metric ton of CO2 per person per year, for...
Designing As Associative Life
Government departments or ministries responsible for sustainability, or "the environment", are too often constrained by small budgets and modest influence. Their very existence allows traditional departments - "industry", "economic affairs", "finance" or "transport" - to carry on their ecocidal ways as normal. A similar problem persists in business where Corporate Social Responsibility has long been treated as a sideline to the real action. A growing number of individuals in government or...
Towards Hackable Architecture
My presentation at Applied Brilliance today was a quick version of my Innovation from Constraint talk, a talk that makes the argument that some of the best design ideas come from facing the constraints provided by material circumstance. Using a whole mess of examples stolen from Afrigadget, the talk argues that we hack technologies once they become familiar – from charcoal to bicycles to mobile phones. I ended with a couple of examples of innovative uses of social network technology,...
Friday Question: Failed Green Living Products?
We'd love to hear your ideas on this question: what green living products from the last decade now look faded, perhaps even bad ideas or failures? Why? (And for extra credit: what can we learn from their failures?)
Tools of Engagement
Most of the time, when designers have been asked to create products, spaces and services with the user in mind, the result has been designs that prioritize coolness and convenience above all other values, says Robert Fabricant in fan excellent post over on Core 77. But what if the 'users' themselves are the problem? What if users represent not a coherent set of needs but a messy mix of desires and influences? What, ultimately, is the role of the designer in sorting through these desires to...
Ask the Planet: Introducing Children to Biomimicry through Music
Nominated by Hesseltje S. van Goor My grant goes to the Biomimicry Institute and their new children’s CD, Ask the Planet and its sister-website, AskNature.org. As Bioneers Radio Show host/producer Neil Harvey describes it: a musical celebration of nature’s genius … designed to connect children to nature, create a sense of awe for the environment, and teach them about the concepts of biomimicry. Coming at a time where climate crisis has gained international recognition, the field of...
ETech 2009: Adobe on Sustainability
At ETech last week, Kevin Lynch from Adobe talked about some sustainability-related things they're working on. The most important-sounding one was actually just briefly mentioned: Acrobat Connect, a web-conferencing tool. I haven't used it, and he didn't demo it, but good online collaboration tools are one of the most important things software people can make for sustainability, because they enable telecommuting and telepresence. When people think of solving the transportation problems,...
In the Bubble
I'm a huge fan of John Thackara and his writing. As I wrote of his book, In the Bubble, That book changed my brain. From the very first few pages, I was hooked: here was design thinking about sustainability and social innovation that understood and loved technology and ingenuity, without being blinded to its downsides, that embraced prosperity and modernity without missing the big picture that our current ordering of the world is both making us less happy than we might be and destroying the...
Conference Report: DesignBoost
Note: We strongly encourage reader reports from the field. This is John Manoochehri's take on the recent DesignBoost conference. In the interests of full disclosure, we should mention that Alex Steffen was initially a scheduled speaker, but had to bow out because of conflicting demands. DesignBoost is an emerging Scandinavian conference, network and brand created by communciations designer David Carlsson, and design entrepreneur and trend-hawk Peer Eriksson, both based in Malmö, Sweden. The...
Will Lights Bloom Across Canada?
By WorldChanging Canada writer Madeline Ashby. Via PhysOrg, we learn of Philips' new "Light Blossom," a green-savvy streetlight that will promises to reduce light pollution while gathering energy from the sun and wind. The flower-shaped lights will not only track the movement of the sun across the sky, but let its "petals" rotate and catch the wind's energy. In addition, the LED lamps will dim during nighttime hours but brighten whenever motion sensors are activated. I can imagine that...
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