#tech design

[natsumipocket]

infobar - (2003) / infobar C01 (2012) design by Naoto Fukasawa

[arcadebroke]

[jellydeprived]

I've been thinking and realised I like the idea of old tech more than old tech itself. As late as the 2000s we still relied on mechanical things and bobs and tiny whirring motors making for a more sensual experience overall. We were granted a completely different flavour of eye candy that was not afraid to show off complexity while still wanting to strike a balance with ease of use. Since the tech was less capable, companies can't simply shove tiny chips doing all the work in a giant plastic thing, also leading to old devices more likely to get the Tech Brick feel. And, as the tech was still new, companies were more willing to experiment with weird forms in an attempt to come up with a hit paradigm.

However, I also like my devices nice and undamaged, which is not a given with used goods (especially as many of the old electronics at home are damaged because younger me was a monster). On a more practical note, even without cosmetic damage I have to deal with natural degradation eg. battery aging, broken mechanics, failing flash memory. Also, obsolescence is real and as the market moves away from old methods and technologies things just stop working well with old tech no matter how much autism (affectionate, shout-out to the FOSS dev community) one throws at the problem (i386 and under 4GiB RAM are no longer bearable to use for the web) because unlike wealth, performance trickles down, and there is little incentive to build for old things especially when the new methods are simply more performant (graphics performance, auto white balance, sensor resolution, battery life).

Essentially, old devices are, if not special artifacts, essentially life forms that one needs to care for, for better or for worse. One does not necessarily get to repair or replace these things because nobody makes them anymore. It makes itself known, as opposed to new tech which is streamlined enough to be able to just disappear as a utility and where everyone seems to just be rallying behind Apple (fuck you Jony Ive btw) and the cloud instead of doing interesting things. By all intents our do weird things capability should have gone up given how much more advanced tech is now.

[statementlou]

SIBWAWC London O2

[naz-art]

Trying to cook up some DVD player designs! I tried to make something sleek and silly but overall I want to make something that’d fit every decor.

I swear these fun technology designs used to be everywhere when I was a kid but when I try to search for them I only see like 10 I’d consider fun and half of them are Sanrio lol

[fylwertastic]

ONE MORE EARTHSPIRIT FOR THE ROAD

[sovietpostcards]

SPHINX - Soviet prototype of a smart home system. Designed in 1985 by Dmitry Azrikan, Alexey Kolotushkin and Valery Gossen of VNIITE (Soviet Institure of Technical Aesthetics)