Furniture Meets the Digital Age

[xchrom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/garden/furniture-design-adapts-to-technology.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=technology


For many people, computers have all but eliminated the need for paper file storage. The Dyvel Table by Silva/Bradshaw does away with drawers altogether.

PHILIPPE STARCK was in town last week, ostensibly to introduce the Zik wireless headphones he designed for the French company Parrot. But Mr. Starck, who had just flown in from Paris, seemed more interested in holding forth on the future of design.

Dressed in yellow pants and unlaced white sneakers, he stood in a smartly furnished room of an upscale town house in Manhattan, jubilantly addressing a small crowd.

“What’s the future of design?” he asked rhetorically. “There is no future. When the product becomes bionic, in the end there is no product.”

The digital age, Mr. Starck said, has created a process of “dematerialization,” in which products like the Zik headphones are simultaneously shrinking and becoming smarter. “It’s the elegance of the minimum,” he said.

The end result? Eventually, he announced, we’ll all be implanted with microchips, and we’ll be the product.

[saras]

1. Kind of dated as science fiction, even funnier as serious futurism

"For many people, computers have all but eliminated the need for paper file storage. "

Who ARE these people? They don't do business, they don't interact with the government, they don't ever draw or sketch ANYTHING that they can't do on a computer - what do they do for a living? What do they do in their spare time?