“A phone is no longer really a phone.
It’s a small computer. But wait, it’s more.
It’s a digital version of you.”
Mark Rolston
Mark Rolston |
Digifest 2014
28 JANUARY 2015 | IN PRODUCTION
For the opening keynote, founder and chief
creative officer of argodesign Mark Rolston
came onstage and delivered an electrifying
presentation, taking the title of his talk from
the H.G. Wells short story The Shapelessness
of Things to Come. Shapelessness indeed,
as Rolston argued that we are moving into
a world of seamless connectivity, in which
objects choreograph with one another.
Instead of taking the grand narrative of
singularity, Rolston described a future in
which the mundane–what he called “dumb”
objects like light switches–can be redesigned
to serve smarter purposes. In a video presentation, he showed designs argo is developing,
such as using an empty pop bottle to change
the volume of your computer and a projector
within a light bulb to display a computer
screen on a tabletop. We already have data
analysts, but now, Rolston argued, we need
data artists. Rolston’s words, provocative
and profound, set the stage for an exciting
future and an exciting festival.