cheer up it's Archigram · 2009-01-20 21:52
I’ve been reading a lot about Archigram recently, and their original proposals, creations and magazines. There’s lots to like; a real optimistic vision of the future, expressed through the medium they knew best – architecture.
from Archigram: 1961-74: A Guide
And it started in a caff. Can’t complain about that.
I’ve been particularly taken with the Botteries: The World’s Last Hardware Event by David Greene and Mike Myers.
It describes a vision of returning to the English countryside, with everything you require brought by bots of all sorts: communication, rooms, walls, even pets. Now, whilst it’s not designed to be bought wholesale, I think we’ve actually reached a place very similar to what is described. We’re rapidly seeing a world of use as needed, rather than purchase and storage. Blu-Ray is the world’s last media hardware event, it’s download from now on. Netflix and Lovefilm replace the purchase of DVDs. Spotify replaces the purchase of CDs.We’re starting to live in a world that would have been unimaginable 5 years ago, where ownership is severely debased as a good quality. We’re even seeing the world’s last physical retailers disappear.
The more radical element of Botteries is loss of house ownership. We’re suddenly in a weird situation where (I guess) the Government ‘owns’ more houses than ever before. I’ve been looking at how much Amazon charge for storing things (30-40p per cubic foot per month). I was talking to Russell about it, and he was talking about how everyone has a junk room. What if you could ship that to Amazon or someone and pull bits back as you need them? We don’t want cloud computing, we want Big Yellow Internet Storage. And then you could have a smaller house or flat. It struck me as very Archigram-ish.
Anyway, what I really mean is that
Some extracts from the transcript of The World’s Last Hardware Event, taken from Concerning Archigram. Buy it. It’s awesome.
