Design theory and considerations:

This project grabbed my interest for two reasons, the social need that the technology fulfills and the design methods involved in solving this problem. The problem and device exemplifies the merging of power and computation that the next stage of technology will be based on.

With the progression of micro processing and ubiquitous "intelligent power" the surpluses of human energy will stem from the ordering of our micro processes and technological uses, instead of our macro processes. A nimaganitive example of this is the progression of climate control methods. The systems of twenty years ago dealt with the climate of a building in a holistic approach bracketing up the climate control to fit the average of the whole building. For example, if you lived in a basement apartment (and your landlord was nice) they would have to turn the heat on to a degree that would keep your room heated properly while forcing the people in the top floors to open their windows. In contrast he systems, which are installed today, control the temperature floor-by-floor or even room-by-room. This technique may or may not use more energy, but what it does provide is a much closer ratio of supply to demand. So as our technologies get more specific by nature they become more decentralized and the old infrastructure of power use and supply will not be able to address the diversity of social and technological needs.

Cell phones are a good example of the new form of organization that has to be compensated for by these new technologies and habits. Instead of using information/power corridors to connect the nodes of infrastructure the cell phone has to connect and power those connections wherever a person with the need to communicate might travel. This new methodology has lead to the advancement of self contained or particulate technologies, such as battery and wireless data transmission. This trend will continue as we delegate more of our daily routines to electrical demands instead of caloric demands. So as electrical methodology and habits replace caloric methods of computation a new strategy has to be conceived to power these devices. And since the old methodology of laying copper wire from a concentrated energy source is not feasible for a area of 57,268,900 square miles, Instead of finding food away from a centralized social group you now have to find power of the electrical kind without using or having a “grid”.

Luckily most of the new electronics power demands coupled with new designs in power production will allow for a greater amount of use it where you find it technologies. Decoupling theses services and technologies from many classical economic dependency structures. There relationship will be closer to a one-time buy scenario more than a multiple dependency contract like cars, gas, oil and windshield wiper fluid have.

So what do these new technologies allow/need in terms of social structures and device planning?
Here are some ideas I have found fruitful to consider when designing new devices.

1. Useful-- to design an object that has application and utility without the need of much explanation;
2. Cost--based on technology that is off-the-shelf that can then be configured accordingly.
3. Scaleable-- to be able to be easily customizable to the individual/owner.
 And
4. Production cost based on labor hours--make the concept essentially open source so the actual implementation would generate the cost and design advancements (ties in to using off the shelf parts).

The current mode of design and product understanding lags behind the technological implementations that now exist. Most industry and design functions are from an industrial revolution mind-set where achievement and advancement were only possible through industries of scale. This is no longer true for 70 percent of the product market. The ability to have flexible applications and devices has blossomed with the advent of dependencies based on software and accessibility instead of the justification of large centralized labor and the modern day consumer it created.
It is once again feasible to try and design for the individual in a cost effective manner or better yet have the individual be able to customize their devices by themselves. This design technique also is able to allow for the ability to reuse and retrofit technologies to new uses cutting down on production cost and waste. The job of the designer is now not to produce a mode of function but to let the individual function better in their own mode. With every individual a new implementation of a device needs to be designed and built.  The real solutions will come from the ability to implement product systems that will allow the individual to easily harness the power of a device while it adapts to their own personal life.