Anti-Mid-Century Modern

In contrast to "Mid-Century Modern" architecture, which seems almost designed to kill children in accidents (indoor reflecting pools, open spaces and levels, no handrails anywhere), what would architecture look like if it were designed to coddle and protect children even from themselves? My best guess is single-level homes, waist-high railings, gates and doors everywhere, every surface rounded and padded, (but not carpeted, because kids spill things) and nothing installed below shoulder-height. That would start looking pretty odd, is my guess, like someone built to one style up halfway, then another style from there up, for the adult headspace. Some of it, especially in the kitchen, would make the house a lot more dangerous and inconvenient for adults, too. Anything that could potentially damage a child would have to be done at height, and that introduces a secondary risk of dropping something on the child or of being preoccupied up high and failing to see the child down low. Is that a trade-off we must make at some point? Safe for kids is always going to be a bit inconvenient for adults, but when it gets downright dangerous for adults, we should draw the line.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is, quite often, what I think about.
PPS - Though, thankfully, not everything I think about.

3D models for shopping online

If you're buying something online, you know what might help? A digital 3D model file, to scale. That way, if you have questions about the dimensions of the object, you can measure it any way you like, inside the computer, as if you had the physical item with you, more or less. Or if you prefer physical objects to check, say, whether a particular toaster will sit on your kitchen bench easily (and you have access to a 3D printer) you could print out a model to test the fit in real space. I think this might easily be a feature of online shopping in the future, at least for some items.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Obviously it wouldn't work for clothes.
PPS - And a rough paper cutout model would be more accessible for most people.

Fire escape slide?

Could really tall buildings provide a fire escape slide instead of the usual stairs? I wouldn't want to evacuate down 50 flights of concrete steps if I were in a hurry. I expect it would be a major selling point, too. The real-estate agent would bring you up, give you a tour of the place, then say "And here's the fire escape! Whee!" and you all slide down to the ground floor where your kids bug you until you buy the unit.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's probably impractical, in the end.
PPS - And a pain to clean and maintain.

Someone should sell fraud insurance

I think we should allow people to buy fraud insurance, in case they get taken in by a scam. We can base their premiums on a test for gullibility.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Really, though, I'd need some harder evidence on scam victims first.
PPS - which would probably be incomplete, since people won't want to admit it.

Nano-Bible

When I see this:
Nano Bible no bigger than the tip of a pen
I immediately wonder how people would misuse and market the idea. I picture a lot of products undergoing a process I'll call "baptism", for want of a better word. I imagine companies mass-producing these things by the billions and putting them in everything. Think of bible-infused makeup and deodorant, a phone case flecked with dozens of nano-bibles, table salt with occasional nano-bible grains. House paint, toothpaste, shampoo, soap, clothing, keyrings, sheets and blankets, floor tiles, all of this off the top of my head and they keep coming.

Basically anything that could accept the adjective "bible-infused" with a straight face. Except toilet paper, I assume.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It is a terrifying future, for a few reasons.
PPS - And it may be on its way.

Planning for kids that never leave home

Because young adults are going to have an increasingly-difficult time gaining and keeping work, and paying rent or for a mortgage, it is becoming more common for them to stay living at home for longer. I think, because this pattern is becoming more common, families will start planning for it as an expected stage of life. We'll build our houses to handle a few adults in transition to independence, rather than planning houses for young families that assume you'll be out the door when you hit 18.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's going to be a subtle difference.
PPS - Or no difference at all, depending on who you ask.

Games on smart watches

I'm starting to wonder what games will look like on smart watches. On phones, we got things like Angry Birds, although now there are a lot more desktop-like games for phones just because the power has increased so much. Smart watches will increase in power, but the size of the watch is likely to remain a very tiny touch target. "Idle games" might be a viable option, since they require little to no interaction, and it's possible that the ready accessibility of the watch screen could result in more "running around" games that only require occasional screen interaction. If your game is heavy on touch interaction, on the small screen, that is going to prove both difficult to use (because precise touch is difficult on such a small target) and no fun (because half the time your finger would get in the way).

You know what might work? Sliding puzzles where an edge-to-edge swipe now and then works well, or possibly slow card games, whether played online or against the watch.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Something you can look at for a few seconds, then put down for an hour.
PPS - Someone will do it right, I'm sure.

Democratic work approvals processes

Could you run a business where a team's approvals are democratic? I'm thinking of things like timesheets and leave approvals, and using online tools to keep visibility for everyone. That way, everyone can see what days everyone else wants off work and can approve or reject it based on that, or can see what time everyone has spent on which projects, and whether that might be a problem.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course, it gives everyone more work to do, too.
PPS - And doesn't relieve the need for managers entirely.

Crowdsource what can't be computerised

To a large extent, almost anything you think can't be automated by computers can be crowdsourced. Do you think an HR job can't be taken over by a robot? Try asking 10,000 people for hire/fire decisions on your potential and existing workforce and compare that to your HR department's decisions. I bet they'd be close. The only question is whether crowdsourcing is cheaper, faster or more reliable than hiring one good person.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The problem gets very meta when talking about hiring HR people.
PPS - I'd love to see how well a crowd can act as CEO.

How small can a dishwasher get?

I think it would be possible or beneficial to create a little in-sink automatic dishwasher rack that connects to your taps. It couldn't hold much, and it probably wouldn't do such a good job, but think of the space savings. For small apartments or small kitchens, this could be a real benefit.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or maybe, by then, the benefits are just too small.
PPS - Because, really, you'd only fit a couple of plates in there, wouldn't you?

Making online workspaces for teams

To bring together the widely-dispersed teams of the future, we need people who can build virtual office spaces as much as today we need people who fit out physical offices to the specifications of clients. The difference is that today's business says "we need space for 60 desks, each with two computer monitors and a phone, plus we need three eight-person meeting rooms" or whatever, while tomorrow's global business might say "we need a connected workspace for a team of 20 people, including easy video for private meetings, plus of course some shared file storage, and we'd like people to be able to work offline and re-sync later". The virtual architect of that workspace will need to know how to bring together existing and new software seamlessly so that the virtual office just works. That should mean that nobody needs to think about the where and how of talking to each other after a 5-minute tutorial.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Very small businesses may have off-the-shelf solutions for online work.
PPS - Very large corporations will be an altogether different beast.

ASMR

Autonomous sensory meridian response, if real, might just be the pleasure centre of the brain reacting to a feeling of intimacy generated by whispering, plus the blessed relief that comes with finally getting some peace and quiet from the noisy world for once. The white noise represents that quiet nicely and, as a bonus, comes with the high-gain settings necessary to capture whispering on a microphone.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not completely convinced.
PPS - I haven't had it myself, anyway.

How I'd spend one billion dollars

If I were a billionaire, I'd build a hotel in the city and just let my friends and family stay there for free forever, with free food from the kitchen, free laundry service and all those things. I want my family and friends to have everything they need for survival, to allow them to focus on the bigger things in life.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or if someone wanted to do this for me, I'd have no objections.
PPS - I prefer a river view. If that helps.

Better baggage retrieval

I think we could do better with baggage retrieval at airports using technology. Instead of having one big conveyor belt and a crowd of people who could easily mistake someone else's luggage for theirs, or could just wander up and take whichever one they like, we should have a system of RFID tags on luggage so that they can be identified throughout the flight and when you land. Then, at the baggage claim, bags are unloaded as before, but then held in individual bays awaiting claim. To claim your own bag, you take your boarding pass and scan it at a machine which recognises the tag, matches it to a bag and sends it down for you. If the airport doesn't have this system, they can still use their old single-conveyor method.

Now, how can this system fail? Well, if you lose your boarding pass on the plane, you'll have to go and see customer service to get your bag with some other ID. There won't, however, be a situation where your bag gets picked up by someone else by mistake unless you manage to mix up your boarding passes. What if someone steals your boarding pass in order to take your bag? Well, they could take your bag anyway, in the current system, but this way you have a chance for the machine to take their picture when they claim the bag, to give some hint who might have it. If your bag is misrouted? You find out right away when you go to claim it, rather than sitting there and waiting for all the other bags to be claimed first.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The thing is, it's fairly expensive to implement and provides only minimal benefit.
PPS - To the airlines, that is.

Modular jewellery boxes

You know, there never seems to be enough of the right kind of space in a jewellery box, from what I've seen. I think it would be both neat and useful to have a modular system where different tiny boxes clip or stick together to form one large box that can expand or contract into sizes, shapes and configurations far beyond its original arrangement. Of course, it's probably not going to be quite as pretty as custom-made, one-size-fits-all boxes, but maybe you can make the pieces out of wood with magnets embedded in them, to keep it looking good.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or keep it simple and just use stackable drawers.
PPS - And probably some dividers inside the drawers, too.

Between share housing and independent housing

Would you agree to live in the equivalent of student housing if the rent or prices were lower? If you had less space and shared bathrooms but gained an inner-city location, would it matter to you? I'm not sure. For me, I don't think I need my shower and toilet to be *in* my house as long as it's in the same building.

When you think about it, this is kind of a step between a share house and your own house. In a shared rental situation, you get your own room, but you have to make do with one kitchen, one lounge and one or two bathrooms. In your own house, you get all of those things to yourself, but for a higher price. There may be room in the middle for independent living with some shared facilities, but more available than just at universities.

Then again, plenty of people will not be willing to give up their ensuites and the privilege of shuffling naked to the toilet in the middle of the night. One day, we may see that arrangement as the "first class" equivalent of living spaces, compared to economy (share housing) and business class (student housing). I've actually never lived in either a share house or student housing, though, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - For me, it would remind me of church camp.
PPS - And as long as it's clean, what's the harm?

Diversifying Hollywood

Hollywood may need to start doing more with less in the future. Putting all their eggs in very few baskets of the "traditional" Summer blockbuster is going to prove a more and more risky proposition until all we get year to year are endless Transformers sequels, cut and pasted from previous scripts. Sooner or later, someone will stumble onto the obvious idea of diversifying their portfolio, figuring out how to make better movies for less money or just making a wider variety of movies.

I think, in general, the days of the behemoth movie companies are numbered. When they collapse, there will be a lot of creative people with nothing to do, but a love of movies and visual entertainment. Those people will probably start making lots of smaller movies on shoestring budgets and putting them online.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - For some people, that's probably all they can do, and so they did.
PPS - And I'm glad for it.

An easier home dishwasher

Unloading a dishwasher can be a pain, and, a lot of the time, it feels really unnecessary. Why go unloading it if the dirty dishes are just going right back in afterwards? Why not just have dishwaser drawers everywhere and, when they're dirty, just run them and the dishes are clean again.

Well, the first problem with that is expense, of course. If every drawer is a dishwasher, then every drawer is as expensive as a dishwasher, too. Instead, I think the best idea is to model your dishwasher setup after commercial kitchens. The dishwasher there is a pull-down square hood that you load and unload with heavy plastic sliding trays of whatever you want. So you have one dishwasher and a lot of trays, and you just put the trays away in your cupboards when they're washed. A little drainage for the runoff and you're set.

Now, your kitchen might start looking a lot more industrial than you'd like, but for some people who prefer function over fashion, I think this is exactly the kind of solution they need.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've been mulling this one over for a while, since my brother-in-law expressed a desire for the dishwasher drawer design.
PPS - It's still very much a first-world problem, especially since the solution will run into several thousands of dollars.

Mental health

We talk about mental health and mental illness quite often these days. Is it taking the metaphor too far to say we should practise good mental nutrition and get plenty of mental exercise? Well, whether or not it stretches the metaphor, I think the mental equivalent of eating junk food and sitting still all day is bound to catch up with you, one way or another.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Probably not with a serious mental illness, though.
PPS - Just mental laziness.

How to punish financial crime

The punishment for financial crime should be the surrendering of your entire net worth, right down to the bone, with a 10% "finder's fee" allocated to the auditor (or whoever) that discovers the fraud (or whatever). The beautiful part is that this becomes a self-policing system. If you, as an investigator, are tempted to look the other way for a bribe, you become the very type of person the other regulators are chasing, and you risk your entire fortune as a result. If you manage to hide your assets under some other person's name, you make them an accomplice and they forfeit everything, too.

It doesn't even have to act as a deterrent, because you'd be systematically stripping the corrupt of their hard-stolen cash and at the very least forcing them to start over while the government finally gets all the taxes they've dodged over the years and then some. Everyone wins except the people who defrauded the system. And their dependents, actually, I suppose. Still, with the government suddenly coming into these huge piles of cash, there should be plenty to allocate to welfare systems.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It might be hard to get at the cash if it's in offshore banks.
PPS - And this might be kind of extreme, but we're in extreme wealth disparity right now.