Daily question: Leash your house?
Fri, Oct 24, 08
» Via Futurismic:
WALKING HOUSE is a modular dwelling system that enables persons to live a peaceful nomadic life, moving slowly through the landscape or cityscape with minimal impact on the environment. It collects energy from its surroundings using solar cells and small windmills. There is a system for collecting rain water and a system for solar heated hot water. A small greenhouse unit can be added to the basic living module, to provide a substantial part of the food needed by the Inhabitants. A composting toilet system allows sewage produced by the inhabitants to be disposed of. A small wood burning stove could be added to provide CO2 neutral heating. WALKING HOUSE forms various sizes of communities or WALKING VILLAGES when more units are added together. WALKING HOUSE is not dependant on existing infrastructure like roads, but moves on all sorts of terrain.
You might be wandering, why have a house that moves? Or a village that’s not even stable on a map? Denmark based N55 gets to the heart of the matter:
Concentrations of power limit person’s access to land by the force of among other things the notion of ownership. The WALKING HOUSE requires no permanent use of land and thereby challenges ownership of land and suggests that all land should be accessible for all persons. Society could administrate rights to use land for various forms of production of food for example, but ownership of land should be abolished.
What happens to architecture as we know it if ownership of land is abolished?
Daily question: The power to know
Wed, Oct 22, 08
October 18 is Statistics Day in Japan:
So, it’s not surprising to learn that:
At 2:13 pm on Wednesday in Japan, 24,497 people are walking the dog and all of them have jobs
In fact, for those of us who live in a country that cannot even properly count its presidential election votes, the level of granularity of Japanese statistics is truly fascinating, as brought to us by Soma who lives, strangely enough, in Brooklyn, NY:
Let’s jump right into this: Japan has the absolute best census in the history of my known world. Not only does it include normal things like age, sex, and the height of each of your pets, but it also legitimizes the gossipy question of What Are You Doing Right Now? Japan slapped a bunch of people with notebooks and a sacred Numbers Mission: keep a log of what you do during the day, in fifteen minute intervals. And those people did!
Interactive visualization of the resulting stats is addictive:
What applications can you think of if the same statistically significant number of people were equipped (not with notebooks but) iPhones+GPS and the data could be visualized in real time?
Daily question: Who needs the polls anyway?
Mon, Oct 20, 08
The American presidential race lives and dies by the polls. Tens of millions of dollars are spent to minutely track every imaginable category of voter tendency. Resulting “predictions” are used to not only inform us of the direction of the horse race but to nudge us to vote one way or the other. After the election is over, one of the very first things we do collectively is to look back and tally whose predictions were off by how much. This is a time honored American sport.
But why bother with all these costly and often inaccurate polls when, apparently, there are far more accurate and cost-free predictors:
- If the Washington Redskins win their last home game before the election, the incumbent party wins. This has been correct 100% in the last 17 elections, until the last one in 2004.
- Every time the Los Angeles Lakers play in the NBA finals in an election year (seven times since 1952) the Republican party wins. This year the Lakers were in the finals.
There are of course many other such predictors, from sales of party-color coffee cups at 7-Eleven to Halloween masks at BuyCostumes.com:
If you were modeling a financial or economic system whose outcome depended highly on the outcome of the presidential race, would you include one of these predictors as a strong variable?
Daily question: Browser Wars, the good old days?
Sat, Oct 18, 08
Douglas Crockford, senior JavaScript Architect at Yahoo!, father of JSON and the author of JavaScript: The Good Parts, gave a keynote address at the 2008 Frontend Engineering Summit at Yahoo! last week.
In this must-see video, Crockford meticulously outlined the history and the cost of painfully slow, still inconsistent, security-blind and pork-laden standardization processes. After stating:
The only thing worse
than where we were
is where we are.
he reached what will certainly be a disturbing conclusion for many “standards” advocates:
As counterintuitive as it may seem, for the web to move forward is what we need a new Browser War?
Daily question: Another quantum leap?
Wed, Oct 15, 08
This is the press release headline for the new Prada phone by LG introduced yesterday:
Notice the proposition “another quantum leap in mobile phone innovation and design.” T-1 lines were a quantum leap over dial-up. HDTV is a quantum leap over stamp-size QuickTime movies of last decade. Most digital cameras sold today at 5-8 megapixels are a quantum leap over Sony’s Mavica or Apple’s QuickTake of yesteryear. The new Prada phone “another quantum leap”?
Almost identical to the highly successful original, the new telephone has a hidden secret. In one smooth movement the ultra-thin keyboard slides from under the handset. As serenely as it appears it slides invisibly, effortlessly away – a modern icon of mobile style and design with an extra competitive edge.
Sliding keyboard is “another quantum leap”? In 2008?
The Prada phone made history as the first full touch-screen phone to reach the market.
What is a “first full touch-screen phone”? Remember, the Prada phone is not even a multi-touch phone yet.
Its elegant good looks combined with a digitally sophisticated interface made it instantly appealing.
What exactly is a “digitally sophisticated interface” in 2008?
The culmination of Prada research and development in the complete interior as well as exterior design and functionality of the phone and accessories was key to this success.
Prada is known as a leading clothing designer in the fashion industry, competing against Christian Dior, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani and Gucci. Here, for example, is the Prada homepage:
So where is that “Prada research and development” for mobile devices highlighted as core competency?
The silver keyboard along with the additional on-screen, call and hang-up buttons gives fresh tactility to the original minimal concept.
“…on-screen, call and hang-up buttons gives fresh tactility”? In 2008?
And it goes on…For 600 Euros, it’s yours, if you happen to live in Italy, UK, France, Germany, Spain or Netherlands.
Why would a western European consumer think this is “another quantum leap” in 2008?
