Posts Tagged ‘jeremy gutsche’

With the ‘net being the free-for-all it is these days, it’s no secret that we’ve been noticing a burgeoning trend involving the formerly pure academic study of history. It’s something which has likely been maddening to the historians, whereby netizens are encouraged to attach their votes to competing versions of a historical account, attaching a popularity rating to their preferred “most accurate” recollection of a past event.

Users are encouraged to click through and read the accounts which appear to be the most credible, with their associated popularity ratings rising with the greater number of clickthroughs which a given entry receives.

The past will never be the same again…

Ever wonder what would happen if you came from a country with a dastardly historical past, the history of which its leaders would just as soon want you to forget? How would you be able to live in a society in which your thoughts were plagued every day by horrific memories?

Enter a new Chinese innovation called “Forgetful Strips,” rectangular sticker-like items which a user pastes across his forehead to induce a chemically-influenced euphoric state that eases the roiling thoughts in one’s head.

From today’s Chinese press release:

The horrors of the past in our country are often too gruesome to describe. The famines of the 1950s and especially the worst of the Cultural Revolution of the sixties and seventies is something most Chinese still have trouble accepting. So while I was sitting in my lab pondering how to assist some of the older generations who have trouble leading normal, healthy lives, I came up with Forgetful Strips. They’ve been a huge success to help people to “erase” their memories and live in a comfortable — but constant — state of euphoria. The questions which they’d once ask themselves which stood in the way between them and a healthy night’s sleep.

And Forgetful Strips are now available for export as well. The company plans to first introduce them to the US market in early 2010.

I saw this on Trend Hunter the other day…freelance goats who can clear your weeds in the event things get out of control.

There’s a new prosthetic in town, kids, and it goes by the name of “Slant-Eye.” You bet this one’s bound up with controversy, folks, tailor-designed as it is for those who want to get in touch with their inner-Asian.

You often hear about Asians — particularly Chinese folk — who undergo the rather painless and simple eyelid modification surgery which artificially induces an additional fold in their upper eyelid so eyes begin to resemble more Caucasian styles. But have you ever heard of Caucasians going the other way? Now that’s a trend in the making!

I followed up on this…

Apparently, there are certain Prague shops that sell a kind of putty which you moisten with normal lukewarm tap water, no boiling…it softens up these little discs of clay that you then apply to clean eyelids which then dries, resticting the movement of your eyelids and which has a weartime of over twenty-four hours. This putty is completely hypo-allergenic, so infections are not a concern should any of it come into contact with your corneas.

As you can see, the photos are quite remarkable, and other than the obvious tell-tale signs of Caucasian faces — more hirsuite, more roly-poly and fleshy — from the septum up it’s all Asian!

Their popularity can likely be explained by China’s “peaceful rise,” and in an effort to endear themselves to their new partners, co-workers, and in many cases — bosses — Caucasian employees are game to ingratiate themselves with their employers by quite literally playing the part. And if current statistics on the matter can in any way be relied upon, the previously higher rate of Asians undergoing lid-altering plastic surgery is decidedly on the wane.

Have you seen this around your town yet? If you haven’t, it’s likely coming your way soon.

Over the weekend I finished off Jeremy Gutsche‘s latest book, Exploiting Chaos, the contents of which I’ve been using like rocket fuel to propel me through this week.

The basic premise of Gutsche’s sensational read is that the absolute best time to act is precisely during times of uncertainty, when the whole edifice seems to be crumbling, like during our present credit crunch which is spanking certain parts of the world more aggressively than others. Moreover, adds Gutsche, the time to make a bold move is never better than right now.

Gutsche’s claim to fame, however, isn’t as a sower of chaos — nor as a writer of lean prose (his book clocks in at almost 270pp, compromised in the majority of attractive graphics and king-kong sized fonts that resemble more a Brezhnev-era Red Square propaganda pitch instead of a needed rah-rah rallying cry) — but rather as a man who is so darn good at hunting down trends. Having said that, Exploiting Chaos is anything but propaganda, and Jeremy Gutsche is the further thing from a Communist-era majordomo. Have a look at Trend Hunter to get an eyeful of what consumes Mr. Gutsche’s working day.

Trends surround us, Gutsche believes, and all it takes is to train your perceptions to identify them when the clutter of everyday humdrum life might otherwise blind you to the obvious daily acts of simple innovation that are plainly staring you in the face. Examples like edible coffee mugs from cookie dough, maxi pads for menstruating female canines, stylish baby toupees, multiple SIM-card holding cellphones for developing Africa, or single-breast covering feminine chic evening wear are some of the hottest new trends on the market, the sorts of social phenomena which form the very spark of the world’s next fabulous ideavirus that can land their creators a motherlode of loot.

Following a few tweets and traded Facebook status messages with Jeremy, I’ve been on the prowl for trends wherever I look. Given my hectic travel schedule this winter season I find myself commending my humble hunt here in Prague. Lately, I’ve been looking through my sweet little locals (generating more than a few perplexed stares, I’ll note) rather than right at them, trying to observe slick things that have trendy written all over ‘em. The sort of hipster habits with just the right amount of punch which might catapult them from the realm of blah-inducing faddishness into the rarefied air of societal irreverence, a key ingredient in all things deliciously rebelliously cool.

I also realized, as I finished Gutsche’s book, that I’ve been doing this sort of thing all along, on the lookout, that is, for all things novel and gnarly. For some silly reason, I’ve just never devised a name for this bizarre behaviour of mine though now I’ve got one (and no, it’s not “sowing chaos”).

From here on in, I commit to codifying these various ideas at my blog, tagging all such future posts as “TREND:” so you can simply identify when I’m waxing poetically about some trend or other, not offering up another plain jane entry.

So without further ado, here are 3 kickass trends I thought of since Monday:

Pizza Bras:

You know those “bras” they have for takout coffee, a kind of narrow corrugated carboard wraparound insulation so you don’t burn your nubs carrying it from the counter to the milk and sugar station or from the drive through window to your SUV’s beverage rings? Well, I think they should make “pizza bras” too!

I considered this over the past couple of days while diving mouthfirst into my latest pizza jonesing, sampling the full gamut of slices on offer in the Golden City while simultaneously marvelling at how much packaging waste would accompany this funny little craving. At nearly every slice joint I bought at, the server would inquire”zbalit?,” or, “Should I pack it?,” which, should one respond affirmatively, would result in a rapid flurry of square-sized pizza trays (first to get chucked into the bin — I mean, who holds onto the paper tray when eating the slice? = total useful life, 10 seconds, max) dividing wax paper while all this would then be enveloped by an appropriately-sized paper bag, slapdashed with some tossed-in napkins, and then topped off by a plastic bag to tote the whole shebag around. I’d stand at one of the available tables and watch as customers would request the full packaging treatment only to throw away the plastic and paper stuff within the first twenty seconds following payment. Why give it if it serves no useful purpose? (I realize the answer to this question in this part of the world is generally: “Because that’s the way it’s done around here.”

Horsepuckey!

After observing this more times than I can count, I propose the advent of a kind of patented “triangular bra” would caress the slice accordingly and gradually nudge the edible end of the slice (the tip, in the majority of cases) out towards the eater’s mouth by a simple folding of the bra at the crust end. In this way, the eater doesn’t get his/her hands dirty, nor would they burn their hands if the slice is fresh out of the oven. The most important benefit is the elimination of all that colossal paper and plastic waste.

Think about it. If anyone wants to take a crack at how this might look, I’d be happy to see a diagram.

Ink Paper:

Ink Paper is the reverse of a pen which writes on paper. In this instance, it’s the paper which writes on the pen.

Confused yet? Well here’s the basic concept: for those old enough to remember (I can’t believe I just said that), carbon paper was a labor-saving low-tech copying device used before the advent of the Xerox machine. A writer could thereby duplicate his/her manuscript without the need to annoyingly whip off a second copy by hand. The black or blue carbon on the reverse side of the slip would remain as a vestige on the blank sheet beneath it as pressure was applied to the paper above the carbon paper by a suitably sharp-tipped pen (or, in some cases, pencil) while the writer normally composed a text.

Ink Paper, rather, would be similar to carbon paper but a more enviro-safe chemically-treated recycled plastics-derived version which could be scribbled upon with a sort of stylus. In sum, it would appear to the naked eye as though the ink were emerging from the stylus, but rather, Ink Paper would contain the “ink” already while this high-friction stylus would be the instrument to reveal it within the Ink Paper.

Ink Paper could be the latest use for billions of tons of unrecycled plastics which have been accumulating since the invention this highly-adaptable compound in the atmosphere, polluting it forever. Plastic could be molded into thin, highly-responsive sheets of almost film-like consistency that would reveal colors, or “ink,” when scratched by the tip of the stylus. The other great thing about Ink Paper, besides reducing (to eliminating) our dependency on clear-cutting Amazon rain forests, would be fewer spent high-grade plastic pen casings plus their metal ballpoint tips that would normally be chucked straight into the trash when done. Rather, the stylus would be a more expensive writing instrument constructed of stronger recycled plastic, that would be kept for longer periods of time, similar to stainless steel chopsticks that are now popular across East and Southeast Asia.

Ink Paper might take a decade to catch on, but once popular, I think it could trounce the market.

Flexible Computer Shells:

We all know what happens to our obsolete computers: they’re scooped up by salvagers and ferried off to the developing world where they receive their own version of a second life.

But what happens to these monitors, keyboards, hard drives, towers, mice, cables, printers, scanners, and other peripherals when they’re no longer cutting-edge enough for the developing world? They’re carted off to landfills or stripped bare and melted down into their component parts for use in other industrial or commercial processes, similar to what happens to old cellphones that are harvested for their constituent cassiterite, coltan, or gold. Still, there are residual enviro-poisoning toxins that are not, alas, fully recovered during such salvage effort, and it is this issue which could be alleviated by the creation of flexible computer shells.

The interchangeable internal “brain” parts of a computer, things like graphics/network cards, hard drives, or RAM chips, are encased in sturdy inflexible plastic. Just look in front and all around you and you’ll see what I mean as you read this post. Once you purchase, say, a laptop, you’re limited by the amount of parts you can shove under that hood, constrained by the physical dimensions of the shell you bought. Once you’re done with that machine, you generally scrap the old unit in its entirety and buy a brand new one.

But just imagine for a second if the shell of your desktop or laptop were like reusable durable clay, resilient enough to be toted around and pressed, though not susceptible to snapping if pressed too far or banging it on a desk? Imagine how by immersing this shell in water for a period of 24 hours or by boiling it and pouring it back into a mould at a service depot, it could be refashioned into a bigger exoskeleton whereby different internal brain-like parts could be modularly inserted into the chassis and rearranged?

So while a user might upgrade to better-performing components, they would also migrate from generation to generation of machine without dispensing of their initial plastic ingredients, thereby reducing overall plastic production by not requiring a brand new computer, lock, stock, and barrel.

By the way, if any of these already exist, let me know, and like I said, I’ll make a point of sharing my “ideation” more often.

Nice little bit of business I recently tracked down at Trend Hunter about Southwest Airlines’ cabin materials cutbacks that will lead to fuel savings of at least $20,000/year/plane, not to mention the environmental benefits from such a policy! A must watch 4:17min. clip.