Good Magazine has some of the best, most relevant content on the internet right now, and their videos often feature simple and intuitive information visualization.
Chris Neidl of Solar One is running a campaign called “I heart PV“. Inspired by science museum exhibits, they have built a prototype device designed to attract people on streets in high-traffic areas. It’s a cell phone charging station with a “preciousness” to it.
It was probably two years ago that I stumbled across Folkert Gorter. I found him because I liked the work that he did, but I bookmarked his site for another reason. One of the sites in his body of work was named SpaceCollective. I clicked on the link and found a glowing orb with the words “Coming Soon”. When I provoked the orb with my mouse it subtly changed to reveal a log in form. I thought that this was quite peculiar.
Sometimes things are moving so fast that it is hard to keep up to all of the change. We are rapidly finding new ways to do things and not always considering the consequences. This animated short makes a great commentary on humans’ interaction with their environments and how they inflict change on the things around them. It was nominated for an academy award in 2003 and is a great 8 mins.
Check it out and let us know what you think.
[Video after the jump]
The price of rice is rising, and this is bad news for near half of the world’s population who depend on it for their daily fill. Earlier this year, a wave of pests and disease swept across Vietnam’s rice fields, decimating crops and causing several rice producing countries to limit their export in order to secure their domestic stock. The world seems to teetering on the brink of a global food crisis, in times where population explosion demands more than ever from the agricultural industrial machine.
And an industry it is. In the 1960’s, the US-funded “Green Revolution” brought monocultural practices to Asia and Latin America, introducing farming practices that focus on a few, chemical fertilizer-reliant crops, optimized for yield, not nutritional value or suitability to local conditions. Monoculture production promised to do for food production what the Model T had done for auto production, and at first glance it worked, the soil boosted by oil-based fertilizer.
Read more…
Today, I was invited to a design charette hosted by SIAT’s Ron Wakkary. It was a 2.5 hour gathering with about 15 talented designers and thinkers from SFU. The goal of the charette was to come up with interaction design concepts for a solar powered house. The focus was partly on raising occupant awareness of their power consumption habits, but most importantly to enrichen the experience of living in the house.
The project is a big one, with 2 other universities in Canada joining SFU to form “Team North”. The concept house is called “North House”, and will be one of 20 entries to the 2009 Solar Decathlon, put on by the US Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
“You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not
We all have stuff. In fact, our lives are filled with and often revolve around stuff. Funny, though, it seems rare that people take much consideration of the life cycle of the stuff that they interact with. The things that we bring into our homes and our lives are too often there due to someone else’s compromise. The economic system that we have North America largely exists due to exploitation, and much of the stuff that we produce and dispose of has a negative impact on the environment and our health.
This short video is a very well informed look into the life cycle of stuff. It is fast paced, articulate, and is well worth the 20 minutes that it will take you to watch it.
Tonight between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., your local time, turn off your lights to show that you care about climate change. Earth Hour is an event that started in Sydney in 2007, where 2100 companies joined in for the energy-saving 60 minutes. Today, the event goes global. Read more…
I have seen interesting prefab houses before, but I really think that the zeroHouse is solving (or attempting to solve) what needs to be done to make these truly practical. By creating prefab housing that can be fully functional off of the grid, the owners can be liberated from the geographical building constraints that exist. Moreover, they can sit on top of the earth. I can see a great application for housing like this in the north, where permafrost prevents from building into the ground and infrastructure is very expensive.