*I dote on these characters.
Dear Bruce Sterling,
Welcome to a new issue of the Next Nature newsletter. This low-tech, low-volume newsletter is connected to the website www.nextnature.net which explores the nature caused by human culture.
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CONTENTS
-Blog Highlights
-Designing for Next Nature @ Eindhoven University of Technology
-Visual Essay in Volume Magazine
-Fake for Real Memory: Next Edition
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BLOG HIGHLIGHTS
Google tracks flue spread via sick searchers
Search giant Google released an experimental tool that tracks the intensity and movement of the influenza virus across the United States by monitoring the number of times that people search the Web using terms related to the disease. Guess what? It kinda works.
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2921
Your grand grand parents new media
Although we don’t think of electric light as ‘new media’ today, 19th century people needed some explanation to understand the difference between the traditional candlelight and the new ‘electrically simulated candlelight’.
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2892
Your grand-....-grand parents new media
Somewhere around 9500 BC proto-farmers began to select and cultivate food plants with desired characteristics. While today we would describe these people as ‘organic farmers’, in their own days they were revolutionary technologists who radically changed their relation with the environment. Nextnature avant la lettre.
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2803
Gel Remote control - waiting to be touched
Human-product relationships increasingly play out in a realm which was previously considered exclusive for human-human and human-animal relationships. Recently Panasonic redesigned one of the most ubiquitous pieces of modern technology – the remote control. The goal was to create a product that is “waiting to be touched”. Silicone lovers get their kick after the click.
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=3000
Man charged for dumping silicone girlfriend
Fifteen policemen rushed to the scene where a ‘corpse’ was found, wrapped in plastic and tightly bound around the neck, midriff and ankles, with hair protruding from one end. The body was taken away for examination, and the crime scene duly secured by a police cordon. When the police pathologists sliced open the wrapping, they were confronted not by a decomposing corpse, but by a life-sized sex doll.
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2778
Flat screen now required for survival
According to the alderman of social affairs in the Dutch city Groningen, Low-income people should be compensated to buy a flatscreen television. Apparently in the media-choked culture of the Netherlands, a flatscreen-TV set is considered a primary requirement for survival?
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2883
Humans are the sex organs of technology?
Kevin Kelly believes that eventually technology will be far more autonomous than it is today. From technology’s view, we are the mysterious walking-around glands that reproduce them.
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2960
Corpus 2.0
A set of portraits by Marcia Nolte illustrating how the human body could adjust itself to the design of products, including an enlarged SMS thumb, an extended shoulder for holding a phone and a foot adapted to create the same posture as wearing high heels.
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2954
Human genome sequencing soon child play?
DNA investigative tools once restricted to academia and crime labs are now moving into the hands of amateurs. Like GPS – once a high-tech wonder now turned into a everyday gadget – simple DNA sequencing may soon be available to almost everyone. How about a human-genome sequence chip on your cellphone? Should be handy to decide who to accept to your genetic-social-network.
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2830
Country looking for a new land
The Maldives, a chain of islands off the coast of India, is so low above sea level that it might be flooded due to the effects of climate change. The government is looking for new land to start a new country.
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2933
If the implications of global warming were fair
Contrary to popular belief, global warming is not simply a bad thing: there are winners and losers. The countries that cause the global warming effect, aren’t necessary the countries who suffer the consequences. National political agenda’s hardly align with their globally felt consequences. What would the world look like if the implications of global warming were fair? A fictional world map.
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2813
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DESIGNING FOR NEXT NATURE @ EINDHOVEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Starting February 2009 the Industrial Design department of the Eindhoven University of Technology takes Next Nature as one of its educational themes.
The Industrial Design department at TU/e works with a special learning model in which students simulate being junior employees of a design agency working for clients from inside and outside the university. The department has a bachelor and a master course and welcomes around 150 students per year. Throughout their studies, students conduct projects within the various educational themes at the department. Among the other themes are AutoMobility, Playful Interactions, Medical Care and Wearable Senses.
The Next Nature theme will focus on calm technology, living products, virtual for real, autonomous systems, information decoration, genetic surprises, design by evolution, manipulating growth, nano worlds and other splendidly beautiful black flowers. Professional organizations interested in running projects within the Next Nature theme at TU/e are invited to make contact.
http://w3.id.tue.nl/en/
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NEXT NATURE @ VOLUME MAGAZINE
The latest issue of Volume magazine features a visual essay on Next Nature by Koert van Mensvoort, a Pig Story by Christien Meindertsma, an Oil Story by Harriet Russell, written contributions by Arjen Oosterman, Slavoj Zizek, Amir Djalali, Thomas Daniell and the familiar corporate animal logo field by Karl Grandin on its cover.
The aim of the issue is to re-investigate sustainability after zero. Originally a wacko, hippy-esque ideology, ‘sustainability’ - aka ‘eco-friendly’ or ‘green’ - has now become globally accepted. But as what - an environmental urgency, a political issue, a technical problem, a historic destiny, a new world order? And what are the consequences of this acceptance? Thus recommended.
http://www.archis.org/volume/
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FAKE FOR REAL MEMORY GAME – NEXT EDITION
In the previous newsletter we discussed our legal issues with the luxury leather luggage brand Louis Vuitton. The Fake for Real memory game was sold in a stylish box, decorated with a pattern resembling the internationally known and faked Louis Vuitton pattern, which was ironically mimicked using right-free ‘webdings’ fonts from MS Word. No can’t do, according to the lawyers of LV.
So what happened? In one word: toiletpaper. We thank the good people of Van Brunchem destruction services for their kind and professional disposal of 2400 memory game boxes. If you happen to have an original first edition box, you are now in the possession of a rare art piece! Devastating images after the click.
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=3046
The good people of NextNature.net wish you many spectacular sunrises.
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