The Computer as Art, Friend
by Mark Ontkush, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 
on 04. 4.07
Do you throw beautiful things away? Probably not, because if you are like most you enjoy things that have taken some skill and time to create. Take, for instance, this Russian computer case pictured at top. Now, wouldn't you do as much as possible to fix that thing to keep it running? Or would you trash it after three years, the average life of a computer. Take a look at it again; unlike most, doesn't smashing that computer seem like a crime?
It's not a new idea, and we have covered these items of wonder before - bamboo mice and notebooks and monitors, for example, all wonderfully crafted. Fact is, no one likes ugly. Ugly gets destroyed, but treating your machine with respect will extend it's life. And the first step out of ugly is to establish a relationship - maybe start by giving your computer a name. Just try it, right now - take a piece of tape, write a name on it, and affix it to your machine. See if it changes your behavior, or your coworkers. If you want, you might try a laser etching to beautify your pal. We're waiting for the comments to roll in.
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Personally I'd do everything in my power to stop this person ever getting near a computer again. To invest care and craft in designing things is essential, but computers aren't made in back rooms by individuals - they're made in factories. Even modders and build-from-scratch users aren't creating their own silicon chips.
By all means care about design and the making of artefacts, but how about some honesty of function here? This is hideous! A beautiful bike looks like a BIKE - not a horse. A beautiful computer should look like a computer, not this doiley-encrusted sewing box. And what's the embodied energy in this thing? And how has it been designed to use as little power as possible? And how can it be altered and modified as use demands?
Answer - it can't. This is a computer designed to hide the fact that it's a computer. It serves for nothing but to show that its user wishes they lived back in the nineteenth century when computers didn't exist.
Umm who said computers had to look like boring beige boxes? It's not my style but cool non the less. I'll assume this post goes along with the design side of this blog, not the environmental.
I see no rational in Mr.Morris's statement. Because he doesn't like the look of it, naturally the maker should be locked away.
Just because some of it is made in china, you should have a hideous thing that is made out of plastic. After all, metal has been around for a long time too. Odds are the energy used to make this box is many times lower than that of one made from fossil fuels or mined ores. It is pompous consumerism, making everything but the most modern obsolete and ugly, that makes the world stink.
Now, I can't read Russian, so perhaps you have some knowledge I don't, but I highly doubt the cover is nailed down, or that the chips have been superglued in place. If you wanted to update that computer, you could.
This computer is in no way only for people who don't want to live with computers. Believe it or not, not everyone NEEDs to have a computer. And the vast majority of people (on earth, not our petty 1st world countries) doesn't have the luxury of owning the most modern computer out there. Most of them don't even have a computer.
There's some interesting ideas here. First, I do think it's an environmental issue, not just a design one. The Russian computer will be usable in ten years, your machine you are posting from won't be.
the other idea I thought of relates to an earlier post, that of making computers locally. maybe you can't make the components locally, but you can make the cases. Imagine a world where cases were locally made and manufactured, with different patterns, technique passed down through generations. Now that would be neat!
Lovely! I thought my last laptop (one of the first generation G3 Powerbooks, all sleek and black) was beautiful, even though it was plastic and not hand made with love like that Russian one pictured. But alas, it wasn't designed to be easily fixed. I really did try, but I never figured out how to access the power plug to resolder it. So it sits in one of my storage bins, waiting for someone to bring it back to life.
So yeah, it's not just quality and beauty that encourages people to keep things around and in good working order, things also need to be designed to be opened and fixed, and the parts need to be easily available, and not more expeisive than a whole new thingy.
Tracing blog links back, it looks like this case is hand made to fit the Fujitsu computer: http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/solutions/it_infrastructure_solutions/linux/products/professional_computers/scenic_e.html
which they state is "sustainable", fancy that.
Also, I don't think this is meant to be a mass market sort of thing. A babelfish on this site says:
Workshop once upon a time there lived. Yes not simply workshop, but on the mahogany yes of restoration, under the wing of the Moscow museum of furniture. And here once entered uncommon order - to prepare computer, yes not simple, but with the "wood covering". And so that everything in it would be made from the tree. Pochesali the backs of the head of master, pokumekali, tried, yes even made. And here is the result.