When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck

I'm reminded of the old Paul Virillo quote:
"When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution...Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress." (From: Politics of the Very Worst)

Disasters have their own spectacular fascination. Here's a satelite shot of the Costa Concordia from Digital Globe.

The hidden beauty inside everyday objects

For years, Nick Veasey has made these amazing x-ray images of all kinds of everyday objects: animals, shoes, sea shells - and larger (really large, in fact) objects like entire air planes, busses and excavators.
It's beautiful, and very informative, too. You really get to see a different aspect of reality.
Check his site.

All copying is not the same

One of the crucial features of digital information is that the copy can be just as good as the original. This has opened the floodgates of copying and obviously made it a lot more complicated for anyone who has invested in creating digital content to charge money for access to it.

But what if the copy is even better than the original? If the one who copies does more than that – and actually adds to the original by adjusting, redesigning, tweaking, remixing…

At a system level, this is exactly what you want copying to lead to – enhancement, development, the emergence of new value.

This is the promise of a free exchange; to move beyond the original. Not always, but sometimes.

All copying is not alike. There are plain rip-offs, passive, even degrading copying. And there is copying as inspiration and re-combination.

It’s hard to draw the line exactly. The latter is a fundamental mechanism of evolution. We need it to stay fit for life. So you don’t want to stop the creative type of copying.

Der bliver trængsel i senior-afdelingen

Analyse-instituttet DREAM laver en årlig fremskrivning af sammensætningen af den danske befolkning. Ifølge deres 2010 fremskrivning ser det sådan ud frem mod 2040 - jeg citerer:

"Hovedårsagen til, at antallet af personer uden for den erhvervsaktive alder er steget, er, at der er blevet langt flere ældre, mens antallet af børn – med undtagelse af en kort periode fra 1940 – ikke er steget. Således er antallet af personer over 64 år steget fra knap 200.000 i 1900 til ca. 900.000 i 2010. Denne udvikling ventes at fortsætte i de kommende år, således at antallet af ældre topper omkring 2042 med 1,47 mio. personer. Det vil sige, at der om godt 30 år skønnes at være ca. 600.000 flere ældre end i dag."

"Der forventes en relativt større stigning i antallet af ældste ældre end i ældregruppen som helhed. Således skønnes antallet af personer på 80 år og derover, at blive fordoblet fra omkring 228.000 til 464.000 personer i løbet af de kommende 30 år"

"Fremover forventes der at blive færre i den erhvervsaktive alder og flere uden for den erhvervsaktive alder. Det betyder, at der omkring 2040 forventes at være 4 erhvervsaktive til at forsørge ca. 3 personer, der ikke er i den erhvervsaktive alder."

Coping with poverty

Just read a bunch of reports about the strategies people have for coping with poverty. It obviously takes considerable effort to get by. Here's a couple of quotes from the report "Just coping" from the Kent city council in the UK:

”Life on a low income is characterised by deep unpredictability. Just one unexpected bill – a new school uniform, or a bank charge – can disrupt the entire weekly budget. The families we met were operating from day to day, in a way that often felt very out of step with the patterns and rhythms of financial help such as tax credits and housing benefits”.

”Men were notable by their absence. Poverty is without question a gendered experience, and it is often women on whom most of the coping work falls”.

"In order to describe the money situation faced by the families, the research team came to use the term ‘Milkybar economy’ after noticing that several of the families seemed to have a predilection for that particular chocolate bar. There are two facts to observe here: first, the ‘Milkybar’ chocolate only costs 15p (about half the price of other chocolate bars) and, second, buying them was a deliberate, economic choice. The cheaper price allowed parents to buy children a sweet or treat with the small change left over from other shopping without impacting too much on budgets.
Of course, not all of the families ‘bought Milkybars’, but these kinds of small margins were a consideration for all."

And here's a quote from the report “You just have to get by - Coping with low incomes and cold homes" from the Center for Sustainable Energy in the UK:

" Overall, 62 per cent of low‐income households had cut back on their heating costs in the previous winter by turning their heating off or down, heating only one room, or using their heating intermittently. However, their experience of cold at home also depended on the effectiveness of any strategies they used to compensate for their loss of heating. These included wearing more clothes, wrapping up in blankets, staying in one room, going to bed early and having hot drinks. The most income‐constrained households were adept at juggling these options as part of their wider strategies for coping on a low income.

The low‐income households who experienced cold homes reported adverse impacts on their mental health, physical health and social lives: nearly half (47 per cent) said the cold had made them feel anxious or depressed, 30 per cent said an existing health problem had got worse, and 17 per cent did not feel able to invite friends or family to the house."

Frugal solutions - IKEA are the masters

Currently, I’m researching on a concept we call ”frugal solutions”.

Danish companies are usually inclined to compete by developing ever more sophisticated new features, moving up the value chain in order to stay out of commoditization and low margins. The problem with that strategy is that you loose sight of another, potentially much larger market. In the coming years it’s very likely that a lot of consumers will demand products that are a lot cheaper. They will focus on need to have, rather than nice to have – out of necessity. High unemployment, aging society, polarization of incomes and a welfare state with budgets under severe pressure will translate into a much larger lower end of the market. And Danish companies are not used to operating in that space, so there is imminent danger that foreign, lower priced companies will move in with their offerings.

This is where ”frugal solutions” come into the picture. The idea is to create solutions that can meet a demand at a radically lower price, but with little or no compromise in utility to the end user. The infamous Tata Nano car from India is an example; The M-PESA mobile phone banking system from Kenya is another. Generally, a lot of frugal solutions seem to emerge from emerging markets.

But there are Western examples, too. Discount supermarkets, low price airlines, the Swatch watches are some of them.

My favorite Western example, though, is IKEA. Visiting one of the blue and yellow warehouses is like an exhibit of brilliantly executed frugal solutions.

I have no doubt that there are plenty of details and system that are invisible to the casual visitor, but let me run through some of the elements that are obvious and easy to observe.

Let the users do some of the work: This was the original IKEA revolution: knocking down furniture into flat packages that could be transported by customers and assembled at home. IKEA has made it as painless as possible. Their manuals use no words, and they are impressive examples of clear communication. Just try any another manual for assembly, to appreciate how well they work. Obviously, this is not by co-incidence, but because the company has invested in developing the entire experience – not just the furniture.

One could say that IKEA has created a whole language or logic around their products. If you have tried assembling a few different models, you will be familiar with their special screws and fasteners.

In the warehouses, IKEA has moved a few steps further. Consumers go to the storage racks and fetch the packages, and they check out themselves, scanning the barcodes and paying with their credit cards. In the cafeteria, the logistics are similar: You are clearly instructed to follow the line, picking utensils, glasses etc.

Modularization: Many of IKEAs lines - kitchens, closets, book shelves… - are modularized, allowing end-users to configure a highly individualized result from standardized parts. This is not unique to IKEA, of course, but never the less part of why you can offer a satisfying experience at a relatively low price.

Democratic design: Clearly, IKEA has been able to create designs that a lot of people like, and make it available to just about anyone. Having IKEA objects in your home is nothing to be ashamed of. Fancy home decoration magazine will show homes with things from IKEA alongside other designer objects many times mores expensive.

Sometimes, IKEA in fact comes up with their own, new classic designs – and of course, at least as often, they create their own low price version of competitors models that they can see are popular in the more expensive shops.

Massive scale. Good design and massive scale of production translates into sometimes amazingly low prices. It's one of those great factoids of the times that the IKEA catalogue was printed in 197 million copies in 2010 - 3 times more than the bible.

Simplified design and cheaper materials: Some IKEA furniture – shelves, tabletops, cabinet doors… - are really almost just cardboard and a hard coating. Clearly, there is a constant strive to simplify models and use only the materials and the amount of materials that really contribute to the user’s experience.

At the moment, IKEA is replacing their many, many wooden pallets for transportation and storage with a new, lighter and disposable pallets made of cardboard.

Understanding the end-user’s context. For several years it’s been a main theme of the annual catalogue to show solutions for maintaining order and comfort in very small spaces. IKEA has developed lots of furniture that makes it possible to cram more stuff and functions into a tiny flat.

The interiors in the catalogue are not all vast, spacious rooms, but small, cluttered, real. An example is the STORÅ bed, on pillars, so you can place a sofa and a table underneath (see the video above).

Decency. Even though IKEA boast of their focus on low price, they also make extensive efforts to operate as a sustainable company. Sourcing wood from decent producers, cutting down on waste and toxic ingredients etc. Again, proof that a low cost solutions need not be morally corrupt.

No jobs - but so much that needs to be done

Weird how we've set our self up. Millions of able and eager young people looking for a job - and at the same time there is so much work that needs to get done. So much decay, neglect, halfway finished projects, looming problems - yet we pay people for being passive. And not just a few - an amazing part of the working age population have no job. In Denmark, 2.050.000 people live on welfare, pensions and student grants. 2.769.000 people have a job - although the salary of 92.000 of those is partially paid by the government (løntilskud).

Tatooes or what?

Here's a slightly unsettling video. Zombie man going back and forth between looking normal and looking absolute tattooed freak. At some point (1:25 or so) things start to blend - that's where it gets interesting.