Two more from Pop!Tech
Two more speakers from Pop!Tech of particular interest to designers:
Edward Castranova is a professor of economics who's spent the last several years aiming his analytic gaze at the virtual realm. Unless you're a lot more involved than I am in online gaming, you'll be surprised to know that a significant chunk of cash (on the order of millions of dollars per year) is spent by gamers to purchase virtual objects or structures that have been created or discovered by other gamers. Castranova makes the very salient point that the distinction between real and virtual currency is becoming less relevant by the day, as is the distinction between real and virtual interaction. With a growing legion of product designers already finding employment in the virtual realms of Hollywood, will the distinction between real and virtual industrial design similarly blur? Castranova's blog is here.
Neil Gershenfeld is the director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, and spoke for half an hour on the group's Fab Lab project, which bills itself as "a group of off-the-shelf, industrial-grade fabrication and electronics tools, wrapped in open source software." What it looks like is a relatively inexpensive rapid prototyping lab, but modified for easier use and more durable results. There's been talk in the design community for years about using RP technology to make actual customized products and not just models; these folks are doing it for real, and not just in Boston.