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SCIENCE | June 17, 2008
The Web Time Forgot
By ALEX WRIGHT
The Mundaneum Museum honors the first concept of a world wide wonder, sketched out by Paul Otlet in 1934 as a global network of "electric telescopes."

article here

Er Or Ur

The UR of Obsolescence.

The Paris Arcades

Reblog for Bob

During Bob's presentation at our conference, this Brooklyn image popped into my head (not to say that I was daydreaming):

Typewriters and Adding Machines

Fear of Obsolescence

"If you become obsolete we'll shoot you."

"obsolete lovers"

This is the only Google image search result for "obsolete lovers".
This unlucky fellow embodies an obsolete lover. This must hurt.

Obsolete Concepts at A Space Toronto

image: Adam David Brown, Core Sample: The History of Art (detail), 2006, Janson's The History of Art (modified), video projection, table

I was in Toronto for 2 short days this week, right at the start of the heat wave that also greeted me in NYC.

I crawled around to a few galleries including A Space, and saw the current show, titled "Obsolete Concepts". It features 7 artists whose work deals with the possible obsolescence of books.

From the press release, "This exhibition brings together seven artists whose works, through various interventionist strategies, present new challenges to the authoritative functions of the book. Through sculpture, audio, paper works, digital imagery and documentation of a conceptual art project, the artists question the relevance of published textual knowledge and the limitations of the book as a finite, bound object currently faced with potential dematerialization."

The essence of escence

This is true. It is important to distinguish the obsolete from obsolescence itself. Obsolescence is a process, a verb, and appears in the English language at about the same time that Niepce made the first photograph.  Obsolete, falling into disuse, predates obsolescence - the automation of the obsolete. 

London is going well. Everything is brand new and nothing is obsolete here.

Cribbed from somewhere online:

Many people assume the word “obsolescent” must be a fancy form of “obsolete,” but something obsolescent is technically something in the process of becoming obsolete. Therefore it’s an error to describe something as “becoming obsolescent.”

pong is back

Bring on the Brain-Computer interface. It's just so much simpler to wear these bathing caps than interact with a key board and mouse, non?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCSSBEXBCbY

Books on order: "Toward Replacement Parts for the Brain" and the
"Toward Brain-Computer Interfacing".

MTAA (reblogged)

post by MTAA (NYC) on obsolescence
M. River's thoughts on obsolescence, published in SMAC! zine. It's from 2003 though, so possibly obsolete.

My Halifax Post

Obsolescence on My Mind

my post on halifax

http://vertexlist.blogspot.com/2008/06/obsolescenceinvention-conference-nscad.html

Designed deterioration

OK, I might have missed something that has already been done-to-death, but I just stumbled across a striking piece by Khoi Vinh, a NY Times design director. [Is is bad form to link another blog post that is almost a year old?]

Related to cradle-to-grave ideas, this basicaly points to objects which are designed to age gracefully, as opposed to our shiny shiny computers and ipods which get scuffed and look old almost immediately (although my i-pod is almost 5 years old).

See here: designed deterioration