Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Wifi Signal Status t-Shirt
This Shirt visually displays detected wifi signal strength. Click on the image to see a gif animation of the shirt in action.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Asimo Vs DARPA Dogbot
After seeing this video of Boston Dynamics Dog Robot, I thought about my future death being crushed under the soulless steel claws of this thing (in the future the dogbot will have claws (and lasers)), but it also made me think of Asimo. It made me wonder; does Asimo fit the criteria to be considered chindogu? Obviously Asimo solve solve the problem of the worlds lack of humanoid bipedal machines. But honestly, doesn't it cause more problems than it solves? At least dogbot can stand his own ground when we send him into the field to fight for our oil.
I am changing the polling options a little bit on this one, removing "not" and replacing it with useful. Tell me if this makes more sense (if there are any of you out there)?
Monday, March 17, 2008
drink pee
Conserving water, among other things, is of vital importance to our future. But, I reckon, if you the average american to drink their own urine, they will say no. Even if it is filtered, the current social embarrassment experienced, will most certainly prevent these devices from going viral. Maybe in the near future personal urine filtration devices will be as much of a green badge as the prius is.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Foodogu
These next three are brought to you by Dr. John Marshall (University of Michigan School of Art & Design Professor) via treehugger.
The Handpresso
A portable espresso machine, powered by a hand pump. My fear with owning one of these is, when leaving for a bike ride, that I would confuse it with my pump. When I get a flat I won't be able to get back home. But at least I could enjoy some good coffe while I wait for someone to pick me up.
Personally I think this item can be a little bit too not unuseless to be chindogu. Just check out these youtube videos.
The Exhaustburger
Saturday, March 15, 2008
The future of Chindogu
It is my goal that this web space be used for the examination of designed objects. Chindogu is a great starting place for this analysis because it a little river that leads to a great delta of ideas. Yet there are some obvious limitations to classifying objects as Chindogu, since many "real world", manufactured object break one or more of the ten tenants of Chindogu. Some real world object (regardless of how unuseless they are) make to the patent office, are for sale, do prejudice curtain demographics, and (the unthinkable) are used by people. Real world Chindogus are not innocent! Therefore, real world Chindogus need to have their own standard of classification. A standard that takes into account corporate motivation, intelectual property, metaphor, and humor. A standard that still embraces the purity that Chindogu gives us.
That standard, for our sake, shall be called... "Unuseless." With that I am glad to announce that we have purchased the domain name www.un-useless.com, and will be rebuilding, updating, and moving this blog to that location sometime early this summer. For now I will still post here, and will pray that it starts some discussion (you know who you are).
I leave you with this...
Friday, March 14, 2008
Hello World
I would like to welcome everyone to Chindogu or Not?, where we ask the question, "is that optimally un useless?" I will have more on the nature, and history, of Chindogu later. But, for now, I will leave you with this question:
...Chindogu or Not?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)