The Green Forest

I recently gave a keynote on the topic of simplicity at a management retreat in Germany for a large lighting company. As with most retreats, we did a physical team-building exercise, which in this case was a five-mile hike up a mountain together. At the very top of the mountain, we enjoyed a delicious dinner in an isolated log cabin in the forest. For sure, I expected that we'd be dining with paper plates and plastic flatware, but instead, there were regular plates and metal silverware. I commented to an attendee that this was quite a fancy affair to be having at a camp, to which he replied that it was required by law. Rewinding the day in my head, it occurred to me that even during one of our mountainside pit stops, we were drinking coffee out of regular porcelain cups.

The simplicity of disposable plates and utensils is quite desirable from a time-saving perspective, but their environmental impact is quite complex. McDonough's mantra of "reuse instead of recycle" echoed in my mind.

Another Typewriter Falls

Every week I count at least one typewriter that has met its demise. It would seem that our society would be more forgiving of these machines. After all, I know of no easier or more direct way to place a printed address on an envelope.

The newer typewriters had little character [sic], as they were under digital control. But the old typewriters were much like an untuned piano in the sense that every letter typed made an imperfect and unique imprint. Type that is set on the Web does not suffer from imperfection. Every letter is placed perfectly on the digital page, with absolutely correct spacing.

I predict that we will see a yearning in our society for more ... imperfection. Not just flaws or errors, of course. We will want to see evidence of what is human-made and real.

XO: Give One, Get One

I was in Miami last week for Art Basel, and it was an odd coincidence that I had just purchased five of Nicholas Negroponte's new XO computers and ended up at a party at Luminaire celebrating the XO. If you haven't purchased an XO yet, don't worry, as there's still time left before December 31 to participate in the Give One, Get One program. Your $400 purchases one machine for a child in a developing nation, and it also buys you an XO for yourself.

These machines don't run Microsoft Word and the Adobe suite of products, but they do run a fluent Web browser. And the machine has a wonderful key that, when pressed, "calls out" to other XO units in its vicinity to create a map of the literal local network that surrounds it. The little rabbit ears on the two sides of the screen form a wireless mesh network with other XO units, so if a single XO has Internet and the rest don't, the single connection is shared by all.

In the distant past, I recall seeing many new computer launches, like those for the Commodore Amiga, the NeXT Cube, and the BeBox, but in recent times it is rare to come across a totally new platform like the XO. The price is right, so I recommend that you buy one while you still have a chance to do so.

Content, Context, Contrast

I gave a talk at Parsons School for Design in New York City last week, and the school kindly put me up in an old hotel in Washington Square. After I got off the elevator, I was immediately confronted with the skinniest hallway I had ever seen. Entering my actual room, I was surprised at how spacious it was because the ultraslim hallway had signaled to me that I might need to be prepared to assume the Munchkin position in my room.

This experience reminded me of the three C's I try to teach my students as the three core principles of design:

• Content: There needs to be a message or meaning. Everything needs a reason to exist, otherwise it shouldn't.
  
  
• Context: Content doesn't live in a vacuum. A Chanel bag sitting on a shelf at Wal-Mart will only confuse.
  
  
• Contrast: An element is made stronger when a counterelement is offered. Salt tastes saltier after one has had some sugar.
  

In this case, the contrast between the hallway and my room gave me the benefit of feeling that the room was larger. Within the context of giving a lecture and staying the night in New York, the room was nothing spectacular but certainly sufficient. Finally, the question of whether or not this post has content is really up to you. Have a great rest of your day.

Redesign Redefined

Last night I attended the Design That Matters benefit dinner held at the MIT Museum. It was the kind of social affair where the weight of the cause greatly outweighed any concerns about what was being offered on the menu. Pictured above is RISD graduate student Tom Weis demonstrating to guest Paul Thompson his collaboration with RISD students MIke Hahn and Adam Geremia for client CIMIT to construct a neonatal incubator composed of mechanical parts from a Toyota pickup truck. Neonatal incubators apparently go for $20,000 and are impossible to deploy in Third World countries. On the other hand, dilapidated automobiles and trucks are in major supply there. So the concept of Weiss and his partners' design was to use mechanical parts that were already available in communities and redesign the system parts into a brand-new object. The logistics issues of getting the parts to where they are needed is solved by using scrap automobile parts, and so is the issue of cost. Labor costs get added in to the equation, of course, but the conclusion is that a lower-cost neonatal incubator that can save thousands of babies' lives can certainly be built with this new technique.

Question of the Day

This morning while visiting the "facilities" here on the third floor of the Media Lab, I was confronted with two philosophical questions posed above the urinal by an anonymous party:

Does technology make our lives more/less easy?
And does this contribute to our happiness?

Certainly a good set of questions with which to start one's day. The answer to the first question is, "Yes. More easy and less easy." Next one: "Yes. Positively and negatively contributes to our happiness." Both questions can be answered with, Do both.