Seeing Walls with a Quickness:iPhone and the hack
Reading through a few technology blogs and then a few psychology articles about the nature of criminals, I was in the midst of trying to combine the two ideas somehow ( which is seems my brain does naturally) when I came across this word of the day on Urban Dictionary: JAILBREAK
All of these ideas mingled with a Thoreau quote that had resonated with me last night as I sat reading Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
“Men have become the tools of their tools”.
While advertising would have us notice only the new options this or that new gadget can offer us, surely there will be things which are lacking. Is it only the technically adept user who will feel the parameters of their new toy or will the laymen have a sneaking suspicion that something is left out as well? It is interesting to flip advertisement of the new freedoms a device might offer you to ask yourself the opposing question of:
“What does this gadget keep me from doing?”
We are at a place in time where only the nerds can save us. Well maybe the artists too. My work this year with Robot 250 has restored my hope that funding may be directed towards a few places other that development of the latest marketable features which also just so happen to rope you into spending more of your precious moola.
Like the high school educated dude ( so I’m told) who invented the best method for making fake fire, it will no doubt take years for some gadgetry to fall into the hands of certain trades, cultures, and economic brackets where we will see the uses of technology stretched in unlikely and amazing ways by people who are in contact with a different set of needs and materials.
Projects like the Gigapan take an adventurous step in the right direction by distributing and collecting the fruits of their invention to a wide array of users. Other companies could learn from this example.
