Zazaziza

Donald Norman once wrote something about how the Amish aren’t necessarily against ‘modern’ technology, as sometimes the stereotype seems to picture them. As observed by Norman (among many others), they usually wait a little bit longer (centuries, perhaps) to check if any new technology has any nasty side effects on people, before deciding to use it. Somehow that concept inspired us to think about a persona, for whom the time span of technologies and their nature (analogue, digital, psycho-holographic, whatever) mean absolutely nothing.

So, what will life be like for the average Amish/Mad Max variety of human in 2250? We imagine this person building things for his own community by mixing mechanical and animal-powered devices from the 18th century with 21st century mobile phones, repurposing and hacking VHS recorders, Michael Faraday inventions and whatnot. Would this rogue element be expelled from his community? No clue, we don’t do the forecasting thingy here!

Pictured above: testing direct camera-less techniques for taking analogue screengrabs using Polaroid instant film. Work in progress or meaningless deviation for/from the Somethingscopes series.