The modern American society is built around the culture of suburbanites. While I've spent practically all my life in urban centers with high rises in America and elsewhere, there's no doubting that the very culture and technology that runs what we now refer to as American, as opposed to Japanese or European, runs around the concept and execution of suburban living centers. Indeed, in this country life-long urbanites like myself living in nyc would be more of an aberration. And one of the major factors that makes such suburban based social system even possible in the first place is the personal mobility offered by presence of cars. Lots and lots of cars. Most of my friends in city areas don't own a car and frequently don't feel the necessity to own a car, since using public transportation system + some assortment of short-term rental car service almost always work out cheaper and easier than the endless battle with cars, insurance, and parking space. Yet it would be suicidal for any suburbanites who compose the vast majority of the population of the United States to not to own a car unless he or she expects to walk on highways with groceries and school children in tow.
Apparently this is T3's new model of personal commuter vehicles, designed to ship people to their jobs within smaller urban and suburban settings. I'm dearly hoping for something like this to hit the marketplace soon, It's three wheeled design is certainly underpowered in any rugged terrain, rugged in this sense meaning any terrain with above average elevation, covered or not. Yet there are convincing evidences that suggest that such vehicle support design is actually much more fuel efficient and mobile compared to the traditional four wheeled drives. No matter how you look at it this is a kind of vehicle designed for simple grocery pickups and short range commutes, a perfect fit for anyone who needs a simple mobility system that's more powerful than a segway but smaller footprint than a fully pledged car. The design leaves much to be desired (personally) but I can imagine something like this practically flying out of the dealerships in droves around price-conscious middle class income area. I can also imagine many of the developing world markets flocking after a vehicle like this, especially if the nations get around to supporting international emission standards through some sort of tax break to manufacturers of fuel-efficient vehicles like this.
This makes me think, it's surprising how we still take mobility for granted. Even in this age of internet shopping malls and semi-omnipresent network, the world comes to a standstill without a real mobility solution in place, something that can get people and things from one place to the other fast and cheaply. And it's all the more surprising how we still don't seem to have made any major breakthrough in the area of physical transportation since the heyday of Ford. Almost makes me feel that the world had been standing still in certain aspects of technology necessary for the future.
This is a new 'luxury' usb based memory storage device named Mnemosyne, after the Greek goddess of memory. It's ridiculously expensive for what it offers. 16GB of storage within a 3D jigsaw puzzle container made out of aluminum (what's with element Al and people these days? Everyone's building something with it. Did mineral prices suddenly drop or something?) costs about 7k euros or pounds, I can't recall which but in either case the drive is crazy expensive. As any computing enthusiast should know, running industrial strength multi-terabyte hard drive array won't cost half as much, though it probably won't look as good.
Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with charging a premium for design. Someone actually need to work to make a good design. You see, there's this prevailing myth in modern age where people for some reason equate good design with good decoration. They are different. There are some zen buddhist temples out there that's been standing for hundreds of years. They are very simplistic with almost no variation of colors with thick beams and practically no decoration in any traditional sense. It's a huge building that exists as a pure manifestation of geometry in corporeal world, a place of meditation where the Platonic ideas meet with the changing nature creating a timeless void of contemplation. In my mind such temples represent the very pinnacle of what 'good design' means. Not just in their simplicity but in that the architect used that simplicity as a tool to create a piece of space where the human will manifests along with physical reality. There are some late-Gothic cathedrals out there that also embodies the very same principles through the irrational exuberance of decorations, the opposite of the zen temple architecture but nevertheless achieving the same goal of good design, creating a timeless yet dynamic space where the human spirit manifests.
And ridiculous prize aside I think I like what the designer of this 'memory device' was going for. Solving through tangles of timelessness into the very core that contains the memories the owner deems most essential to his or her being. I just wish someone who'd buy that would actually have the mental capacity to meditate on their experience, but for some reason I remain skeptical on that regard.
No comments:
Post a Comment