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Softening the Edges of Technology

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-generic-white-boxes-here dept.

Tired of the generic grey boxes that fill corporate offices? A New York Times piece looks at the efforts by some hardware resellers to soften the edges of the PC with elements from nature. The piece goes over the efforts of places like Suissa Computers, which offers 'desktop computers in cases of oak, walnut, zebrawood, purpleheart, mahogany, maple and leopardwood'. Likewise, Holzkontor of Neustadt and the company Wood Contour offers keyboard and monitor sets that adds a naturalistic touch to the average soulless desktop setup. They don't just touch on commercial options, talking briefly about homebrew case-mods: "Nicholas Falzone, 20, a third-year architectural student at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is just putting the finishing touches on the second computer case he's made. 'It's taken me at least a thousand hours,' he said. The case has an aluminum interior frame to support the computer workings. The outer frame is made of koa and maple. Mr. Falzone did the rough cuts with a table saw; after that, almost all the work was done with hand tools. 'Each joint has multiple mortises and tenons,' he said. 'I didn't use any screws or glue.'" Interesting to see the beautification of PC cases in the pages of the old grey lady.

3 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Part of the furniture by hack++slash · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you want your PC to look like part of the furniture then you can take a leaf out of the books of those mini-itx modders, the most notable 'furniture' type ones are:

    The Clock
    Mantle Radio
    Cigar Humidor
    Gramophone
    Pictureframe
    Micro TV
    Telefunken
    and for the geek, the Windows XP box (as in the cardboard box the OS comes in, but with a sly RedHat trick)

    --
    To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
  2. A matter of fashion by Dogtanian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It is absolutely a matter of style, and wooden computers -I hate to say it because of the amount of time that this guy spent making it- are not particularly good style. No, it is absolutely a matter of taste. Even if we accept that there is a taste-independent concept of "style", I don't believe that it applies here. You don't like wooden computers? Good for you, but it's your personal preference. That's all.

    Where will a wooden computer fit in? Anywhere with a large amount of traditional-looking wooden furniture. It would probably look at home in my parents' living room; far more so than their 4-year-old beige PC, or even a more recent black and silver one. Ditto anyone who spent the money on a wood-paneled study, etc.

    Technology is not supposed to look wooden. Says who? Oh... yeah, you do. Well, I'm sold.

    They tried it with tvs too, in case anyone remembers. Yeah, it used to be quite a common styling. There obviously weren't too many complaints at the time, else they wouldn't have used that style for something like 25 years.

    Who has wooden tvs these days? They look like crap. Matter of taste. And- more importantly- probably a matter of long-term fashion trends.

    Have you ever noticed that all electronics these days are silver? Yet from the early-1980s to the mid-to-late-1990s, everything was black. When I was a kid I remembered thinking finding those late-70s brushed metal hifis old fashioned, because I associated black with the modern stuff that was in the shops. I remember at some point in the late-1980s my CS teacher came across an early-80s computer that we both laughed at because it was so "space age". Okay, part of that was the styling, but it was also because it was covered in spray-painted silver coating. The exact same style of silver coating that covers a lot of modern electronics.

    Nowadays, those mid-80s black-with-flat-panel-buttons-and-red-lettering hifis now look... very 80s. I'd have found a lot of the style-conscious brushed-metal digital cameras around now very dated-looking if I'd seen them in the 80s. I saw an Agfa camera from the 1960s recently and briefly had trouble telling if it was really old or really new; but I liked it. And yet 20 years ago, I'd have hated it and thought it looked old-fashioned.

    Similar arguments could apply to wood. Sure, wood looks old-fashioned and is less likely to make a comeback for that reason, but that's not really the issue here.

    In short, never underestimate the effect long-term technological fashion trends will have on you.

    A wooden computer might fit in well in a cottage, but why would you want a computer in a cottage anyways? If we ever needed confirmation of your blinkered closed-mindedness, here it is. Do you think that someone living in a cottage wants to live in some sort of 19th-century Beatrix Potter lala land, cut off from modern technology and society? I suspect they'd want a computer for the same reasons that 99% of the population do. Why the hell wouldn't they?
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  3. Time Better Spent on Other Projects by louv · · Score: 5, Interesting
    As a woodworker and career Nerd (read: 20+ years), here is my perspective:

    For me, woodworking projects fall into two types: "quick and dirty" and "furniture".

    The "quick and dirty" are things that don't need to last more than a day, a week, a month or even a year. They aren't pretty, they are fast, and they are only as sturdy as they need to be to get the job done. They are generally made from plywood, and other cheap, strong, leftover scrap wood.

    "Furniture" projects are things that should last Decades. If I did my job well, they will outlast me. Tables, chairs, and cabinetry fall into this category. Pretty woods, weeks of effort, and lovely finishes highlighting the natural colors and grains of the woods. These projects honor the trees that gave their life so I could have pretty things. Not always sustainable forest-grown, but that's getting better over time.

    Back to computers... They have an average life-span of 1 to 5 years... Maybe they'll last 10, but seriously, how many of us have a computer around that is more than 5 years old? So why build "furniture" for Today's Computer. The shapes and sizes and plugs and interfaces and monitors and power needs change every few years. Why would you expect that to not continue? Think about it from this perspective: if you has spend 3 months building the perfect computer case (out of rare Koa and Ebony) for your Commodore 64 twenty years ago, would it still be occupying deskspace in your home? Probably not.

    So building "furniture" that fits today's computers is just short-sighted. Beautiful and rare hardwoods should be used and enjoyed in artistic creations whose lifetimes should be measured in decades, not months.

    This goes for computer cases and furniture custom built around technology (stereos, home entertainment systems, computers, monitors, etc.) How well does that 50" Plasma screen fit in the "entertainment center" you bought 10 years ago?