David Bellona

Oh Dyson vacuums - functional and thoughtful industrial design. One caveat to a “bagless” Dyson is remembering to clean two filters in order to keep it running in tip-top shape over the years. But you have to remember. If a customer forgets to clean the filters, the vacuum’s performance slowly degrades over time, leaving that customer with a now subpar, poorly functioning vacuum.

Dyson knows this and uses registration as a time marker. Six weeks after mailing in my registration card (old school, you can do it online too), I received an email from Dyson: wishing enjoyment, reminding me to wash the filters “every now and then”, and asking permission to keep sending me reminders.

(phone = smartphone)

Feel that buzz in your pocket? Your phone is asking you to re/engage with it once more. But here's the kicker - it's not in your pocket. What you just felt is a phantom vibration, a sensation felt by millions (ok, thousands) of phone owners. The result of a quasi-symbiotic relationship, we feel our phones asking for our attention even when we leave them on the shelf. On the flip-side of that relationship, we too depend on our phones: directions, time, documentation, news, mail, transportation, food, banking. Oh yes, calls.

Extending our abilities towards superpowers, phones can be crutches as much as they are tools. To quote author Adam Greenfield, "When we rely on technical systems to ameliorate the burdens of everyday life, we invariably allow our organic faculties to atrophy to a corresponding degree". What do loose in our dependence on phones? What do we loose when we loose our phones? Do they become phantom limbs? Turning your phone off is more than "taking a breather"; it's a dare. It's about flexing fundamental communication muscles and refining one's instincts.

I think you haven't seen any good 15 second instagrams yet. Give it a second - it's going to space! The creative community will always maximize the technology to push the art. Look at George Lucas using miniatures and hand cranked cameras to make Star Wars. Look at what Pixar made in 1990-94 using SGI computers with 8mhz processors. Look at @origiful's Vine account. The interesting thing here with Instagram is how much technology they've put into this product to give users choice. Camera stabilization. Filters. 2.5x more recording time. It'll be interesting to see whether it will overwhelm, bore, or excite users.