iPad Teardown - Courtesy of the FCC
It’s not every day that we get to see a Federally-funded hack:
More of the story here if you want to make one yourself.
What’s The Impact of an iPad?
Op-Chart in the NYTimes on the weekend of the iPad launch - a lifecycle analysis of the iPad, timely for discussing the core element of analysis in LCA - the functional unit.
Daniel Goleman, author of Ecological Intelligence and Gregory Norris, LCA software expert at Harvard authored the “chart” comparing e-readers. The authors compared the Kindle, the iPad and a book by determine the functional unit as the reading of 1 book, and measured the “payback” of how many books one would have to read on an e-reader to = the ecological impact of a regular non electronic book.
With respect to fossil fuels, water use and mineral consumption, the impact of one e-reader payback equals roughly 40 to 50 books. When it comes to global warming, though, it’s 100 books; with human health consequences, it’s somewhere in between.
All in all, the most ecologically virtuous way to read a book starts by walking to your local library.
As an avid library user, even I find this conclusion smug. It makes me want to stop going to the library, and buy an iPad. The students also felt that this statement encouraged people even further to make the jump and buy an eReader, because 40-50 books seemed like a reasonable goal for someone buying such a device.
In class however we determined several other “functional units” of the iPad that were not analyzed in the LCA:
_Use of a bazillion non e-book apps.
_Listening to music.
_Watching hulu. Nope can’t do that because of the flash problem.
_Making art with digital fingerpainting apps.
And then we also identified more emotional/cultural uses that we would never be able to measure in an LCA:
_Showing off/bling status/class status.
_Give us ideas future world-saving (or at least world-distracting) apps we will build.
_Provide ideas for making SPIMES that would be materialized only on the iPad screen.
_Acquiring something to put in our Gucci bag designed specifically for the iPad.
And all of this points right to the limits of LCA. If you believe the device has the potential to change the culture for the better in the future (only 1/3 of students believed so), how do you account for the ecological impacts today?
Products Stories Class Week 5
Stakeholder management is an alternative to shareholder-based management, but shareholders are still at the table. In this class we look at the impact of shareholders on how things are made. Review of sources of competitive advantage, limits to growth theories, and emerging alternatives to the current organizational structures available. Social entrepreneurship, Coops, Conscious Capitalism discussed and debated.
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If Products Could Mar 8 2010
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Students Marry Products
For the rest of this course, 11 students will become obsessed with 11 things. How these things are made. Where they are made. Who makes them. Who consumes them. How people make money of of these things. How these things are marketed. How governments regulate these things. How activists and NGOs advocate to change the way these things are made. The greenhouse gas emissions that result from this thing being made, consumed, and landfilled (or recycled). The environmental effect of this thing on human health, environmental health beyond greenhouse gas emissions. And then, we will find a better way to make these things.
Here are the 11 things:
Eyeglasses
A Smart Phone
M & Ms
A Sandwich with Prosciutto and Mozzarella Cheese
Cigarettes
Iceberg Lettuce
Condoms
Legos
Electric Car Batteries
Algae-Based BioFuel
Zipcar
Product Stories Class Week 4
What role does government and regulation play in determining how stuff is made? Short answer - it depends on local, regional, state, federal, foreign governments, and international organizational administrations. In a stakeholder view of how things are made, regulation is one of the fastest changing, hardest-to-predict forces and as makers, we need to work in advance of legislation, to lead the market.
If Products Tell Their Stories March 1 2010
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Product Stories Class Week 3
NYU ITP class on life cycle assessment, systems thinking, and stakeholder management. Week 3: In a stakeholder management model, what role to local community groups, activist organizations, workers’ advocacy groups, and other NGOs play in determine how stuff is made?
Product Stories Class Week 2
Discussion of initial LCA research as a background to product story.
Consumer behavior as a lever of change.
If Products Could February 1 2010 B
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If Products Could Tell Their Stories - 2
Second term at NYU ITP teaching a seminar course on systems thinking, lifecycle analysis, stakeholder management, and talking about spimes. Teaching product storytelling dymanics to students who know how to make things talk.
If Products Could Jan 25 2010
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Dutch Extremes: Posting at Core77
I’ll be posting at Core77 this year, starting with this observation about some of my favorite people and their addiction AND repulsion to social media:
In her annual Christmas Message, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlandswarned of the dangers of too much virtual friend making. She encouraged people to put down their phones and laptops and re-establish physical connections. “We tend to look the other way and close our eyes and ears to what’s going on around us. Nowadays even our neighbors are strangers,” said the Queen. Real, not virtual friendships are needed to create a feeling of solidarity and to express compassion.
Image Courtesy of rnw.nl: The Queen in Her Golden Carriage
All of this from a culture that seems to be one of the most socially connected on earth. More than half of the country’s population, over 9 MM people, have a profile on popular social network, Hyves.nl. The Dutch are the most prolific bloggers in Europe, with 15% of internet users taking part in this activity. Habbo Hotel, a Dutch-created social network for kids, is taken so seriously that cops have attempted to arrest thieving teenagers for stealing virtual furniture.
While Dutch-based commentary on the Queen’s message was negative (referring to her as a Luddite, suggesting that she lives in a Golden Cage, and other un-translatable name-calling) a Rotterdam-based media lab had already turned her pronouncement into an app. Moddr launched theWeb 2.0 Suicide Machine last year (via TechCrunch). Just give the app your social network names and passwords, and it will purge your presence on Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites. In late breaking news via the company’s website, Facebook just banned the service, but that may not stop an emerging trend of rampant virtual anti-social behavior. All of this designed by the Dutch to make you wonder - is all of this social networking a force for good, or are we hiding behind our screens?
Open Forum Post: What’s Your Foodprint?
Dec 18, 2009 -
Take a look at your meal. I’m looking at mushroom ravioli, parsley, olive oil, Italian bread, and parmesan cheese. But I can’t accurately tell you where these tasty food items come from, how far or wide reaching their impact. I do not know my meal’s “foodprint,” a concept discussed at last weekend’s NYC Food and Climate Summit.
What is a foodprint? A foodprint is our food system’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change, according to Jacquie Berger, Executive Director of Just Food, one of the conference’s organizers. The impact of your food may be far greater than those incandescent light bulbs you replaced with fluorescents, or even your hybrid or gasoline-powered car. It is estimated that one-third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally derive from our food system, the way we cultivate, process, package, transport, and dispose of our food.
San Francisco residents have a longer history and deeper connection to the land that surrounds them. Order a steak at one of San Francisco’s foodie establishments and you will be told a story about how the cow was raised, the farm where it lived, and what combination of grasses was fed to your cow for optimum health and happiness. Even SF’s recent composting initiativefocuses on fertilizing farms within a known radius of the city, “to make the food taste better.”
How will New Yorkers, the largest, most populated, and densest city in the US, ever conceive of a sustainable food system? Professors, chefs, nutritionists, students, gardeners, community organizers, farmers, designers, and sustainability activists are collaborating locally to envision a prosperous and healthy regional food system. Local politician Scott Stringer, the Manhattan Borough President, launched a The NYC Sustainable Food Charter in advance of the summit. Christine Quinn, NY City’s Council Speaker has followed suit with a program called “FoodWorks New York,” turning NYC’s Department of Education and its immense buying power (over 860,000 meals a day, second largest to the US Military) into an opportunity to create fresher, healthier meals, and jobs along the way. Lettuce would be bought in New York state, shipped and packed to the city to a retrofitted industrial space used as a fresher processing facility.
Meanwhile grassroots projects are being prototyped by creative, curious, and concerned citizens: projects like urban windowfarms, rooftop farms,vertical farms, and brownfield reclamation through composting are popping up all over the city as demonstration ideas of a sustainable future. How is your region rethinking the food system?
Eco Impact
- Designers Accord
- EcoGeek
- Enviroblog
- Grist
- Inhabitat
- o2NYC
- Treehugger
- World Changing
- Yale Environment 360
Financial Impact
Social Impact
Social Media
- Aaron Strout
- Altimeter Group
- Conversation Age
- Edward Boches
- Going Social Now
- Greg Verdino
- Jane Quigley
- Joe Jaffe