Richard Edgley

How will we be manufacturing and consuming electronic products in 2025?

Three Royal College of Art graduates believe we won’t be going to high street or out of town stores to purchase our manufactured consumer electronics. Instead we will purchase and modify through the O.System:

“Using printable electronics and rapid manufacturing processes a more local consumer electronics industry is born. In this system, people select their electronic products online. They can then visit their local O.Store to talk to the technician about the purchase and add personal touches. O.Products can constantly evolve through update cards in the post, while old electronic cards are sent back for re-manufacture. O.update is about understanding our needs and living in a transparent system where they are uniquely tailored to individual people.” 

We increasingly need to take a sustainable approach to how we manufacture, use and update consumer electronics. This is not just about the brands we purchase but how we update and modify them to meet our changing needs and as the products degrades over time.

Peter Krige, Hannes Harms and Alex du Preez have an interesting vision. It is a vision that resonates with an emerging trend for people to modify and hack their homes and wider environment.

There continues to be much debate about what the future of print is in a world of digital. Is there still a place for newspapers, magazines and books as physical paper products when we can consumer them on a smartphone, tablet or traditonal computer?

I think there is. But the realtionship will be different. This post is not an attempt to answer the question. It is merely an opportunity to share something interesting about digital and print. About media consumption and editing. About the possibility of the Internet of Things.

The design studio BERG has created The Little Printer, a product that brings together the digital and physical. The Little Printer serves as a miniture publisher. It enables you to print live social media streams, updates, text messages, images. Using the Berg Cloud technology you can deliver personal messages to other owners of the Little Printer and curate news stories from publications like The Guardian. They are all printed on paper the same size as a till reciept.  

I think it is rather beautiful, charming, initimate, simple and fun. 

Here is a rather nice clip showing what its all about:

So what does it all mean? 

Status updates and Tweets are often like snowflakes falling on warmer ground - they exist for a brief period and then melt away. The Little Printer allows you to print out content that might mean something. This could become significant in a world overwhlemed by digital, where it becomes important to have a physical a memento. Something beautiful and fun that you can pin to the wall. Something that grounds you to the physical in a digital world.

This can be extended to the increasing trend of self-editing, control and curating content. This can be seen with apps like Pinterest.

The other interesting thing is the associated technology.The Berg Cloud technology enables you to use an app to connect devices to the Little Printer. This is core to the 'Internet of Things'. An example of the potential to connect devices to everyday household objects so that they can be more useful in our lives.

The Little Printer may not be the answer debate about the relationship between print and digital. But I think it serves as a beautiful and fun example of the potential to link physical and digital communication in a tactile and personal way.

You can get your hands on one later in the year. You can find out more here: http://bergcloud.com/littleprinter/