There's a thundering hailstorm in Phoenix today, sending drops of frozen hate clattering across the skylight and beating the life out of weak trees. On the outskirts of my peripheral vision, I caught a glimpse of something white and jagged -- the future.
Life as a human right now is akin to having woken up inside the chute of a woodchipper. We may not even recall how we got inside the woodchipper in the first place. The one thing that is clear : the inevitability of the blades.
A feeling like saws chewing into my neck. The sounds of weeping just outside my door. And a cold light knife into my pupil reminds me : This is a world divorced from hope.
When facing a suffocated reality of nonexistent future, what do you do? Here are some options :
1) Lie down and wait quietly for the ice weasels to come. 2) Cry until you're too tired to cry any longer, then die. 3) Fight until death. 4) Put on heavy metal records and rock out for as long as possible.
Now, I don't know which of these sounds most attractive, or which you, the reader, may already be doing. I choose option #4. Here's why :
* Metal music is brain floss. * Metal music improves blood flow to the face. * Metal music is not a norm. * Metal music has no sympathy for your suffering. * Metal music remembers when you were only an animal. * Metal music hasn't heard about your regrets, but it can drench them in molten @#$%^& * Metal music will survive long after the Universe is toast. * Metal music recognizes your true form and can restore it if lost. * Metal music connects you with that aspect of youself that you forgot about. * Metal music is truth erupting from a sea of lies.
There's no future. But with metal music, the present can be made to rock. In these bleak and doomed days, everybody looks for help. Some go to shrinks, some watch TV, and some try in futility to numb the pain with drugs. Well, you all are welcome to your 'cheese' heroin, 'lean,' and amphetamines. I'm an Earache man myself. (47,348)
The storm is coming. You've heard it on the radio; seen it on the TV show. The Latewire has been humming warnings for a long time. A dull echo catches you by the ear -- what's that? That's the sound of hope retreating. It flees because it's impossible to prepare for this kind of storm, even when it's known to be on the way.
Total dissolution of the contemporary lifestyle is about to happen. We're about to be plunged into an era of base servitude and complete debasement. We've managed to use our preference for self-enslavement to facilitate a future of real enslavement -- think "Spartacus" without the good soundtrack and with more degrading "oysters vs snails" problems.
The people who facilitated the collapse did so because the knew that their actions had made it more likely, and that if they bet against our survival, they could win big and move to Tahiti while we get introduced to a new life of total abjection.
While you're waiting, think about how much information about yourself you choose to advertise or give away. It's always used to further demolish your autonomy.
Even though it's far too late to do anything to prevent utter catastrophe, there are steps we can take in a last-ditch effort to survive and stay human: Learn new skills pronto. Trust no interface. Stop the hemorrhaging of your information. (49,431)
Having the wrong idea can lead to pleasant surprises. This isn't always the case, of course -- for example, being under the impression that one is going to school and later finding out that one is indentured in a spirit-extinguishing mill of bleak negation straight out of a Brueghel the Elder panel is actually a pretty nasty shock. But sometimes, misunderstanding can lead to a fun serendipity.
My experience at this month's IxDA (Interaction Design Association) Phoenix event was such a delightful mix-up. I'd understood that this event was going to be about "rapid prototyping." When I hear the phrase "rapid prototyping," I'm thinking about supercool "3D Printers" and the like, such as the RepRap, an amazing self-replicating prototying / microfacturing robot. This kind of rapid prototyping is so cool that it makes th' first Guns 'n' Roses record look like Candlebox' B-side collection, and I'm really into it. I was expecting, say, a presentation from a prototyping professional or tech guy and hopefully a demonstration of one of th' amazing machines. Seriously, these things are cool -- look them up! Your university probably has one.
As it turned out, the sort of rapid prototyping on deck at IxDA Phoenix that day was th' sort where a bunch of designers sit around a table with cardboard and kindergarten-style craft materials with the intention of developing a profound improvement on a common household item and building a model of the improved concept.
This turned out to be big fun and more awesome than watching a robot build pieces of itself. Th' industrial-design posse split into two teams. Our team, Team 1, chose to reimagine the domestic laundry setup, while our esteemed competition Team 2 opted for the toaster oven.
One of Team 1's main ideas was a way to integrate "line-dry" or "drip-dry" clothing items into the normal wash / dry regimen without the need for liability-fraught clotheslines or brassieres hanging in the shower.
This was accomplished by creating a slot-based, cartridge-fed air-drying section on the side of our laundry assembly. The design created a rapid-air-dry system by recycling the heat exhaust from the dryer unit through a piping system (cooling the air slightly) and then circulating it amongst the air-dry clothing. The air-dry items are placed in V-fold flat cartridges mad eof perforated non-corrosive screen to maximize air flow. Any water that is captured from the air-dry process is recycled to the washer mechanism. Each load / cylinder can be programmed to stop and make a sound at the end of the washing stage to aler the user to the presence of air-dry items within the load.
The other main idea of Team 1 was to eliminate the hassle of manually changing clothing loads from washer to dryer. This was accomplished by the use of a rotating "magazine" of three laundry cylinders, each of which can be loaded and programmed differently. The cylinders rotate on a central carriage device and are individually and automatically engaged and disengaged from the main rotation motors in the washer and dryer sections of the machine. The cylinders are constructed and ported in such a way that they can function either as washer or dryer vessels.
The washer section of the unit is on top, the dryer is on bottom. The "third" cylinder is idle and out of view until rotated into the washer or dryer position.
With this system, the user can load up to three loads of laundry at once including air-dry-only items, and expect the air-dry items to be done at roughly the same time as the normal machine-dry items.
The entire system takes up approximately the same footprint as a conventional washer-dryer pair (but is slightly taller) and can use the same hookups. In sum, this system is more convenient, more variable, and more eco-friendly than current standard laundry setups.
Team 2 designed a below-cabinet toaster oven, the GuttenTost, that looks like a Star Wars vehicle and serves up tasty toast without the space-hogging hassle of a big-footprint kitchen appliance. Watch the video -- it even makes great toast out of cardboard bread! (42,554)
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