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Dear Bruce Sterling,
Welcome to a new issue of the Next Nature newsletter. This low-tech, low-volume newsletter is connected to the website http://www.nextnature.net which explores the nature caused by people.
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CONTENTS
– NANO Supermarket: Call for Products
– Blog Highlights
– Essay: Razorius Gillettus – On the origin of a Next Species
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NANO Supermarket – Call for Products – Win € 2500
Self–cleaning windows, contact lenses with a build-in display, smart medicines, cyborg insects, nano-particle tagging spray that may identify your possessions when stolen, breathing textiles, tooth phones, organic jewelry and implantable microprocessors.
Nanotechnology is an important emerging technology of our time – it radically intervenes with our sense of what is natural – yet most people are still relatively unaware of its consequences. Hence, this autumn 2010 the Next Nature NANO Supermarket will be presented: a physical supermarket featuring debate–provoking visions on possible nanotech products expected to hit the shelves between today and 2020.
We call upon designers, technologists and artists to submit their speculative nanotech products for the NANO supermarket. A selection of the projects will be presented in the Nano Supermarket and the accompanying publication. The best submission is awarded with a € 2500 price.
Submission deadline: 31 May 2010.
Event website: http://www.nextnature.net/events/nano-supermarket/
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BLOG HIGHLIGHTS
Designing Bugs that eat Plastic
Plastic is well on its way of becoming a basic material in the Earths ecosystem – It hardly breaks down and almost all of the plastic ever made still floats around somewhere. Would it be a appropriate to engineer a microbe able to digest plastic, in order to balance the situation? High school students are taking the lead.
http://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/designing-the-bugs-that-eat-plastic/
Why Handwriting Must Die
Anne Trubek argues that handwriting will soon be history, because writing words by hand is a technology that’s just too slow for our times, and our minds.
http://www.nextnature.net/2010/01/why-handwriting-must-die/
Digital Gastronomy
The food printer seems to be one of those lustrous concepts that continues to pop-up in the fantasy of techno–connoisseurs. Yet, we are still waiting for an affordable food printer to arrive in our kitchen. Perhaps the folks from the MIT fluid interfaces group can engineer the cake?
http://www.nextnature.net/2010/01/digital-gastronomy/
Facing your Car
Do cars have a face? You would be inclined to say yes. And you would be right as well, because they do. Study has confirmed through a complex statistical analysis that many people see human facial features in the front end of automobiles and ascribe various personality traits to cars—a modern experience driven by our prehistoric psyches.
http://www.nextnature.net/2009/11/facing-your-car/
Infobesity
Following people and news-sources on microblogservices like Twitter, has become a new addictive nature for many people. The result of excessive infocalorie consumption can be infobesity. Time for an information diet?
http://www.nextnature.net/2010/01/infobesity/
How to ‘grow’ a steak Scientists at the Eindhoven University of Technology are trying to grow meat by extracting cells from the muscle of a living pig and then put them in a sticky broth of blood from other animal fetuses. The cells then multiply and create muscle tissue. They believe that it can be turned into something like steak if they can find a way to artificially “exercise” the muscle. Sponsored by a sausage maker Stegeman.
http://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/scientists-grow-pork/
Birdfeeders spit Blackcaps in two species
Until now, most people have likely regarded bird-feeders as merely a pleasant addition to their gardens. But scientists have now discovered that bird-feeders in the UK are actually having a serious long term impact on bird life – they’ve found that the feeders have brought about the first evolutionary step in the creation of a brand new species.
http://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/birdfeeders-spit-blackcaps-in-two-species/
Implantable Silicon-Silk Electronics
Scientists of the University of Pennsylvania are creating electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body, through the use of thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates. Eventually these that might act as photonic tattoos that can show blood-sugar readings, as well as arrays of conformable electrodes that might interface with the nervous system.
http://www.nextnature.net/2009/11/implantable-silicon-silk-electronics/
Deliver us from Skeuomorph Prosthetics
Why do the designers or artificial limbs always stick to the predictable prosthetics in which the visual appearance of the original human limb is retained merely as an ornament of a lost functionality? If you have lost your hand and you need a prosthesis, why no grasp the opportunity to go for an upgrade?
http://www.nextnature.net/2009/11/deliver-us-from-skeuomorph-prosthetics/
Moscow won’t let it snow
Already in the early days of modern civilization, people claimed that they could control the weather. A known example from recent history are the rituals that American Indians used to induce rain. Nowadays, many people still tend to regard these stories as fairy-tales and consider controlling the weather impossible. In Moscow though, the mayor recently proposed a snow-free city.
http://www.nextnature.net/2009/11/moscow-wont-let-it-snow/
Economy, as seen from Space
Reliable data on economic growth is hard to come by in many parts of the world, especially in developing countries. Yet outer space offers a new perspective for measuring economic growth. Using satellite images of nighttime lights scientists have created a new framework for estimating a country or region’s gross domestic product, or GDP by observing the changes in a country’s “night lights”.
http://www.nextnature.net/2009/10/economy-as-seen-from-space/
Aging Barbie
You wouldn’t give it to her but Barbie is already over 50 years old. The doll made her debut at the American International Toy Fair in 1959 and has been a young girls (and gays) beauty icon for decades. Just image what Barbie would have looked like today if only she wasn’t so utterly plastic fantastic by nature. Peculiar image after the click.
http://www.nextnature.net/2009/11/aging-barbie/
Who designed the Banana?
Looking at a banana from a design perspective, one immediately notices the fruit is highly ergonomic and sophisticated. The design of the banana is so good, some evangelists present it as evidence that an ‘intelligent designer’ must have created the fruit. These evangelists however, makes a quintessential mistake on the ‘natural’ origins of bananas.
http://www.nextnature.net/2009/10/who-designed-the-banana/
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ESSAY: RAZORIUS GILLETUS – ON THE ORIGIN OF A NEXT SPECIES
In 1975, when the first two-bladed men's razor Gillette Trac II was advertised, its excessive design was parodied on the US Television show Saturday Night Live. The creators of the satirical television program played on the notion of a two bladed razor as a sign of the emerging consumption culture and made a fake commercial parody for a fictitious razor with the ridiculous amount of three blades, emphasizing the consumer is gullible enough to believe and buy everything seen on TV.
Of course, the comedians of Saturday Night Live could not know a three-bladed razors would become a reality on the consumer market in the late 1990's. Let alone that they could have anticipated I would shave myself with a five bladed razor this very morning. Welcome in the twenty-first century folks: No we don’t travel in spaceships… but we do have five bladed razors!
A story about design, technology, market and evolution.
Read more: http://www.nextnature.net/?p=4250
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