Paper 1 -
Circles and props: Making unknown technology.

Bailey Newton-Browne.

“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?”

This question was originally posed by Arthur C. Clarke but it has been brought to me by this paper. Kristina Andersen and Danielle White have created a project in which we observe them grab a random bunch of people and use them in order to reach a somewhat unreachable goal, now a days, to create potentially new technology. What’s interesting is they mainly focused on children in this project because children are generally more imaginative. They required people with variations of imagination to create new technologies using a table with junk and trash on it. Miscellaneous pieces of trash were laid out and people in participation were offered them in order to put certain pieces together or on top of each other. When they were done, they were all asked what they’d each made. Sometimes, these ideas that were thought up were practical and could actually be used in the modern day with some tweaking and alterations. The simple goal was to do this and see what the outcomes were and if they could be applied to the actual production line.

Someone came up with the idea for speakers inside of someone’s mouth. The participant called it, “The mastication amplifier.” It was made out of some foam and tape, string and plastic cups, all trash. This is an example of how things that are made of trash can make product ideas. It might not be practical or even useful but it does spark some ideas doesn’t it?

In class, we all eventually agreed to the fact that this project that was actually able to inspire ideas and we also suggested that even if the test was only open to kids, it may actually inspire even more ideas than the original project. If you applied something like this for a company that sought after ideas then they might be able to enhance it and make it more efficient. What I’m saying is that I actually believe that if this idea was more talked about, it would be more used and applied around the future companies. I think this can help, be it in a small way or a big way, it will help.

The author’s both believed that this could be used to therapize it’s participants. They made the OWL project to display the reactions it’s users had and also to see if it could create new technologies but they also believed it could “confront desires, bodies, and dreams about technology” I think this shows how passionate the two of them were for this project and how much they wanted certain outcomes it might hold.