Vigilantism vs Sustainability

Vigilantism is explained by the Oxford Dictionary as “law enforcement undertaken without legal authority by a self-appointed group of people”. I received via snail-mail two postcards describing how to protect myself, or more, the house, against burglars. So its not entirely vigilantism, but is it a call by the local police to make sure that nobody is tempted to break in. How do we call that, responsibilisation? What it comes down to is that if you do not leave your lights on at nights, don’t be surprised someone breaks into your house, and its all your own fault. In a place where double-glazing is still a thing of the future and streetlight are powered by nitrate-gas, one does begin to wonder if the sustainability-agenda has arrived in the far north yet – I think its truly irresponsible for a local police force to engage in this fear – mongering – by -snail mail; the methods they propose, however, are possible even worse. Its 2017: its simple unheard of that you would encourage people to leave their lights on the entire night! 

A more practical point if looking at picture 3 and 4: isn’t a dark house the bet protection there is? Either a) the thieves won’t enter because they cannot see from the outside if anything valuable is inside and b) if they do enter, they would need a flashlight, which makes them extremely visible from the outside..? Whereas if you leave your lights on, its nothing out of the ordinary when someone outside would see  people  in a well-lit house are just moving about?

Besides the strange advice and the weird message this is sending out, I am at least glad the local police did a good job, visually!

Computers and design the 80ties and 90ties in Dundee

For this post, I’ll keep it short. Just want to point out that Dundee and its surroundings have an interesting history when it comes to computers and interface design in the 90ties. NCR, an American manufacturer of ATMs, cash registers and the first computers, had its European base in Dundee. They also made watches here and very cool posters for those watches (picture 3 – now that is proper graphic design!). Where now , I find computers and smartphones boring replaceable pebbles, there was something about those early days of electronics design that made them exciting and cool…

Maybe also because back then, they did not link computers to these guys yet:

Now it seems the only thing computers and phones are  good for is to track, spy and monitor, or be tracked and spied upon. How would the police force of that time think about and react to our digital shouting rooms, and  what would a digital “Brank” look like for online slander and swearing, I wonder? (And how on earth would you enforce it?). Anyhow, back to my own screen-prison, that, by the way, still has the same keyboard as the computer in the 2nd picture. I won’t go into the reasons why and how (it is an interesting history of lock-in models and habits), but maybe it is time for interface designers to step up and truly bring us into the 21st century… (where is my sentient VR ambient intelligence space/pod/sensor environment where I can transform and shape my thoughts into other media?).