Design with Intent | Entertainment

Uninnovate – engineering products to do less

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 10, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Image from uninnovate.com
I’ve just come across a very interesting new blog, uninnovate.com, which focuses on the phenomenon of “engineering expensive features into a product for which there is no market demand in order to make the product do less.” The first few posts tackle ‘Three legends of uninnovation‘ (the iPod’s copy restrictions, Sony’s mp3-less Walkman, [...]

Some links: miscellaneous, pertinent to architectures of control

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 1, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Ulises Mejias on ‘Confinement, Education and the Control Society’ – fascinating commentary on Deleuze’s societies of control and how the instant communication and ‘life-long learning’ potential (and, I guess, everyware) of the internet age may facilitate control and repression:
“This is the paradox of social media that has been bothering me lately: an ‘empowering’ media that [...]

Some interesting aspects of built-in obsolescence

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 1, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

This San Francisco Chronicle review of Giles Slade’s Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America (which I’ve just ordered and look forward to reading and reviewing here in due course) mentions some interesting aspects of built-in (planned) obsolescence – and planned failure – in technology and product design:

Use of RFID in DRM

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 22, 2006 ⋅ One comment

Via Dave Farber’s Interesting People, a brief New Scientist article outlines Sony’s continuing obsession with restricting and controlling its customers (the last one didn’t go too well):
“A patent filed by Sony last week suggests it may once again be considering preventing consumers making “too many” back-up copies of its CDs…
Sony’s latest idea is to place [...]

Feature deletion for environmental reasons

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 27, 2006 ⋅ 6 comments

From the Sunday Times, ‘Standby buttons face axe to curb energy waste’:
“Ministers want to do away with the standby buttons that allow [users] to flick their TVs and other electronic gadgets on and off while moving barely a muscle…

ABC wants to disable fast-forwarding on digital video recorders

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 8, 2006 ⋅ 3 comments

Via BoingBoing:
ABC Looks Beyond Upfront To DVR, Commercial Ratings Issues (needs you to sign in – use username ‘wasteoftime’, password ‘wasteoftime’):
“ABC HAS HELD DISCUSSIONS ON the use of technology that would disable the fast-forward button on DVRs, according to ABC President of Advertising Sales Mike Shaw, with the primary goal to allow TV commercials [...]

Neuros: ‘Freedom by Design’

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 5, 2006 ⋅ 2 comments

Following on from the last post about the Neuros MPEG4 recorder, looking on the Neuros website reveals something pretty unusual for a company involved in consumer product design – a clear statement of design philosophy, ‘What do we stand for?’ that’s heavy on content and light on vague rhetoric:
“Your Digital Rights and Why They’re Important [...]

EFF: Another Endangered Gizmo – the Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 5, 2006 ⋅ 2 comments

Image adapted from Neuros website
Via EFF DeepLinks, details of the Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2, a product specifically designed to allow users to break through the arbitrary architectures of control imposed by other video devices and formats, and hence make the most of the content you own:
“[It] digitizes analog video output and records it to a [...]

‘Labels on digital content should spell out how easy it is to move from gadget to gadget’

By Dan Lockton ⋅ June 5, 2006 ⋅ 2 comments

A warning label mockup*
The BBC is reporting that the All Party Internet Group (APIG), a cross-party group of MPs, has made some intelligent – and interesting – recommendations about explaining DRM more fully to consumers:
“The MPs’ report made several recommendations and called on the Office of Fair Trading hasten the introduction of labelling [...]

High frequency wave files back up again

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 31, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

They’re back up (well, the wave files anyway), thanks to the Internet Archive.

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