While we are very much against power waste from electrical technology and their vampire power-packs, we do have a strong negative reaction to this design concept that all the cool blogs are waving around. The concept offers a place to hang your plug when it’s out of the socket and therefore encourages you to, erm, take your plug out when you’ve finished using your electronic stuff.
While we respect that Paulo Oh has the right to experiment and play any way he feels fit, we don’t think this idea is worthy of the spotlight focus it has received on sites like Yanko and Product Dose. We have a couple of problems with this idea.
a) People aren’t unplugging their electronics because they don’t have a place to put their cables afterwards. Unplugged plugs spotted by guests during dinner parties are not major embarrassments.
b) The concept involves a significant change in behavior – you get on your knees, you pull out, then you hang up the cable.
C) Many vampire power-packs (e.g. the ones for your mobile phones) have the plug already built in. So this concept fails to deal with them.
Why not just put an on/off switch on all sockets instead? Maybe one that glows. Or gives out a shrill cry every 30 minutes. That’ll remind you to unplug.
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Yes! Thank you, I thought the same thing when I saw this. To boot, it looks breakable as all hell and where in world did they happen to find 2 cords with the conveniently shaped flat tabs to rest perfectly with the plug shelf. Grrr.
July 25th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
just more shyt we dont need.
July 25th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
WAT??? U PEOPLE ARE NUTS. This invention, is, BAR-NONE, the most ingenious and influential thing since the internet. Obviously you people do not see that within a couple years, these things will be in EVERYONE’s homes and offices, and the only people who dont have them are pooping in ahole and have never seen an electrical outlet anyways. IT IS THE FUTURE!
July 25th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Gulla,
You are either on crack, or an identity theif. Probably both, because I see that you have the SAME IP address as me. What??? Get out of my brain!
Oh, and yea, these are DUMB. I just hang my plugs on a glass which is half full of cran-apple. That way they MARINATE, so when I plug them back in, they use less energy. WHO IS SAVING THE EARTH NOW, BITCHES?
July 25th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Get rich quick. Wrap some plastic around a wall socket.
July 25th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Designing (prototyping, sampling, reprototyping), manufacturing and shipping a product takes a solid amount of resources (e.g. electricity, coal, oil, money). Designing products to curb consumer use of resources is completely contradictory.
July 27th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
While I don’t think this invention is genius, it does open up a bit of power-saving dialogue which is a good thing.
Still, I do have to reply to Lauren’s comment “Designing (prototyping, sampling, reprototyping), manufacturing and shipping a product takes a solid amount of resources (e.g. electricity, coal, oil, money). Designing products to curb consumer use of resources is completely contradictory.”
Lauren, don’t you think that good design is should change behaviors? Good design is about guiding people to a better end.
In the case of green design, if the end product is worth the “amount of resources,” then “designing products to curb consumer use of resources” makes absolute sense. Hybrid cars are designed, solar panels are designed, compostable utensils are designed. These designs curb consumer use of resources.
These designs, no matter how far they may need improvement, are the future of any economy hoping to survive in the modern world. Humans make a footprint on the earth, whether we like it or not. Our job as designers is to shrink that footprint as much as we can, while using as few resources as we can.
July 28th, 2008 at 10:29 am