Well, this was fun. Right now, I’d rather be making little ironic, provocative things to think about nearly-real near future worlds than just about anything else. This is very satisfying. Way more satisfying than just writing about such things, and much more satisfying than making the same old stuff for some big gig…

Giulia Simi interviewed The Near Future Laboratory over at Digicult Magazine. It’s all in Italian, but I’ve provided the original that was translated for the article.

I’ve been wanting to mess with this thing for a spell, but I couldn’t find a breakout board at the usual places, so I just up and made one. The LIS302DL 3-axis accelerometer is used in the Wii’s controller, as best as I know. Cool little 2D barcode on the chip there, huh?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/guatevino/

This is the second prototype hardware for the Slow Messenger project we’ve been working on. It’s slow going, naturally enough, probably the result of too many design projects for peculiar mobile devices going at once.

“In order to do interdisciplinary work, it is not enough to take a ‘subject’ (a theme) and to arrange two or three sciences around it. Interdisciplinary study consists of creating a new object, which belongs to no one.” Roland Barthes, “Research: The Young” in “The Rustle of Language”

A bit of overt geekdom here, but we’ve been getting a few requests for designs that relate to time — a peculiar watch design for one, and an even more provocative sort of life time-piece. And time is one of the design idioms we’re interested in anyway, so I went ahead and constructed a break-out board for the DS32C3…

I had the great pleasure of participating again at Picnic, this time organizing a panel between Fabien Giardin, Nicolas Nova and Dennis Crowley on the topic “The Near Future of Pervasive Media Experiences.”

Leah Buechley’s “wearable” edition of the Arduino is this Lilypad styled PCB.