Core77

A Seemingly Transparent USB Memory Stick

Poetic, and pricey

By Rain Noe - July 14, 2022

in Object Culture

If you're still using USB flash drives, and would like to pay £50 (USD $59) for a single 16GB stick, here's the designey solution for you. This is the Empty Memory Transparency USB stick:

Because your average USB flash drive looks like this on the inside…

…you might wonder how the heck they made this transparent. It isn't, it's a visual trick. Each unit is stainless steel, and the storage end of it has been polished to a mirror finish, giving the visual impression that it's transparent. (*Correction: Sharp-eyed readers have pointed out that the transparent portion is, in fact, transparent acrylic; it appears the chips have been shrunken and stowed inside the metal portion. Thanks to Damian, Dan and Scott for the spot.)

"Each design contains a physical emptiness in its sculptural form," the company writes, "giving the metaphor that you can fill the space with your own memory." I think the memory that would stick with me most, is that I spent ten times the price per gigabyte.

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Dan Farrow

3 years ago

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Yeah they make them tiny nowadays. This product looks like a tiny USB with an superfluous block of perspex. Pretty though!

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Sean Horita

3 years ago

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HAL memory drives in '2001' were clear like this - you can see them in the deactivation scene -

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Damian Penney

3 years ago

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"…you might wonder how the heck they made this transparent. It isn't, it's a visual trick. Each unit is stainless steel, and the storage end of it has been polished to a mirror finish, giving the visual impression that it's transparent."

Pretty sure that's not accurate, in one pic you can see the thumb all the way through the perspex (which is listed as one of the materials) and in the frame version of it they have a keyring passed through it.

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- Scott Carpenter
  
  Damian Penney
  
  3 years ago
  
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  I don't think Rain read the copy on this closely enough...
  I still think this is a ridiculous design though. The added material only serves to undermine compactness. I couldn't even see where it lit up.
  
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Damian Penney

3 years ago

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"it's a visual trick. Each unit is stainless steel, and the storage end of it has been polished to a mirror finish, giving the visual impression that it's transparent."

Are you sure that's accurate? The pictures on their website show different versions where it's just an empty frame on the end, and you can see their thumb through the plastic bit in one shot.

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- Rain Noe
  
  Damian Penney
  
  3 years ago
  
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  Noted and corrected in the post! Thanks all for spotting it.
  
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