Empty Tech’ers keen on recycling the energy around us might want to take a look at RSA’s new product, called “Airnergy”, which turns the wi-fi waves you’re swimming in into power to recharge your devices.
I wonder if one day we’ll be able to reduce our dependency on the mains, and charge small devices (or large ones?) off an array of this kind of thinking – from energy produced by walking on floors to roadside turbines.
Distributed power capture. Recycle everything.
I love this little paper “zoomable map” idea that reminds me of those fortune-teller origami toys we’d make in the playground – watch the video for a quick demo. (Via j4ngis.)
Tempted to buy one for inspiration, as well as my trips to London. I wonder what else the paper-reveal could be used for…
What continues to fascinate me about the Japanese is not (just) their technology, but how they apply it. Sometimes it feels like we’ve had the hacker attitude beaten out of our culture in the West – when we buy something, we get sold its functionality and its mindset at the same time.
OK, maybe I’m gushing rather unfocusably, and PR efforts always do their best to, uh, think different, but this YouTube video for Nikon’s Coolpix camera/projector (DPReview) shows how something fairly simple can be used in fairly unexpected (if rather weird) ways.
(via Wired)
True to the idea of Empty Tech, I can’t help but think that the whole of a “website” is rather antiquated – quaint, even. The idea of sitting down to an overpowered desktop computer, and the surrounding environment of furniture that gets bundled up with that, in order to read a few measly lines of text reminds me of the steampunk genre – a great hoohah and a great show of energy, just to roll up a small incline. Is that really what emptytechnology.org should become?
In the world of data feeds and snack-size content, A lot of “portal” ideas have become aggregators these days… – but the portal is still a website, still a window into a network.
I’m hoping that emptytechnology.org can take the basics that are in place there – the idea that threads can be drawn together, and knitted together to become something more than that. Perhaps an “uber-aggregator”, although it’d be nice to move towards something fundamentally different as time passes.
As technology becomes more ubiquitous, more device-, connection- and situation-led, it may be better to think more about what a domain is – a look-up, a point of reference, a collection of objects, even a community – than what website is on that domain.
Not sure that this is Empty Technology, but this mobile office trailer from Vodafone is at least amusing:
Image of Vodafone trailer
A step towards integrating technology with the outdoors? Or another false move towards separating work from the environment? Should work consider the environment more? Should work even be led by our environment, rather than just seeing our open space as a place to escape to?