The Ultimate Chair
bt445 pointed us to the
desk of the future (well, kinda: we mentioned it here a couple years ago, but it's looking much nicer now. Mobile chair, multi head monitors, customized air flow: it would seem a shame to write code with this bad boy: it really looks like you should use it to drive a mech.
I mean really, this setup looks like a recipe for obesity and muscle loss, sitting in an overly cushy chair with all your electronics within easy reach.
A few years of this and your muscles will atrophy.
The human body wasn't designed for sitting nearly motionless for such long periods of time, if you try to make it do do, you're going to get back aches, arthritis, obsesity, CPI and a host of other muscular-skeletal malfunctions.
Something better would be something like the running pad for the old school nintendos, where you can move your whole body around to use your computer. Step with your right foot for carraite return, left foot for back in your browser, etc, etc, etc. A few eyars of this, and geeks would have the body of Adonis.
Dunno about you guys but when I grab the FM I'd like to check those examples and thingies while I'm reading (at least at work). IMHO this design sucks for system administrators (that would be me ;)), programmers, site art designers, financial managers (don't know the right verb), application managers, and maybe even directors / managers themselves (there is hardly any space to talk with customers). So whats left? IMHO the ordinary secretaries and the people behind the desk, but I doubt if they would like a design such as this ;)
IMHO people should concentrate on how you can use this kind of stuff. NOT how it looks.
What? Me, the ultimate technophile, not impressed by smooth curves, individual lightning and A/C?
That's because I think this is simply the deluxe-version of the stupid little computer-tables we find in the corner of computershops.
You know, the ones where you have your PC, Printer, Keyboard, Paper and Mouse jammed into a tiny little space without any real desktop space at all.
I find this rather important: you cannot have enough desktop space. It's cute if you can rotate your workarea to follow (avoid?) the sun, but where do I place my books, papers, notes, disks, CDs, magazines, lunch?
I'm currently designing The Ultimate PC Desk with a good friend (a carpenter in Germany), and the main thing so far is to have a truly massive workspace (yes, when it's done we'll put up a site and I'll tell you all about it).
Thinking of these Poetic Technology (hey, nice name) desks, I imagine a huge, open room, full of these things, with people sitting edge to edge to edge to edge...worse than cubicles, ugh.
Klaus---
"What, I need a *reason* for everything?" -- Calvin
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/