Nokia ships 1 million new handsets every day; along with the clothing industry, the mobile phone business is the pinnacle of continuous conspicuous consumption: people buy new phones just to have something new.
Nokia has released a concept that is at least heading in the right direction here – a handset that’s made completely from recycled [...]
“Reuse, we are told, is as green a virtue as recycling. But with e-waste all the old ecological dogmas start to become ambiguous. Cellphones represent only a part of the world’s e-waste problem. But they are a key to understanding how complicated it is. They also embody the kind of high-tech products that we will [...]
“MobileActive07 convenes people from all over the world using mobile phones in their social change work. Participants include nonprofit practitioners using phones in their organizations in innovative and creative ways, mobile technologists, researchers studying the use of mobile phones, artists and activists. Participants explore how mobiles are used in advocacy, education, health, and democratic [...]
“Uganda is a country coping with a severe energy crisis resulting in frequent power cuts. In addition, access to mains electricity in rural locations is limited. Given that mobile phones require power, and access to power can be unpredictable – how do people keep their mobile phones and other electrical devices charged?”
Link: Power Up: Street [...]
Two interesting articles about mobile phones from the always-must-read Economist. The first, interestingly, predicts divergence rather than convergence and uses cars as the developmental analogue. I’m not convinced by the divergence argument here – unlike cars, mobile phones are general computing platforms than can adapt (or be adapted) to user habits in a way that [...]
Completely off topic, but a great podcast about designing space (corporate and metropolitan) to encourage creativity.
“How can the design of physical space and public policy encourage creativity and high performance? We put that question to our guests Clive Wilkinson and Steven J. Tepper. Clive is principal with Clive Wilkinson Architects based in Los Angeles. He [...]
Published by Gabriel White.