A BUTCHER’S hook/look (Cockney rhyming slang)
Just a note here - I recommend installing the Substack app (free) on your phone. It’s easier, works well and looks better! Or online here - browse away!
missed call
The phrase ‘dialing a number’ comes from the days of rotary phones, yet it’s still understood and used - even though most of us now just tap a ‘call’ button on a flat screen. These kinds of expressions, often called linguistic fossils, survive long after the original technology has disappeared. Some even morph into new interpretations. Does ‘hanging up’ mean the same thing to a Gen Alpha who’s never used a handset?
Everything about this photo I took on 33rd St, brings back the New York I first encountered. The city really had its own identity and it was all visually new to me. It speaks of a different time - 10 / 126 / 35mm photo development, cigarettes, street phones including ‘tidy litter’ of brown bagged bottle and Budweiser can left in the phone booth (and there’s even a corduroy jacket).
cool calling
We showed some of the coolest stuff at spring! In 2005 we joined forces with Nick Rhodes (not that one), who put together a fantastic exhibition of new ‘product’ thinking in the UK - called ‘what you looking at?’. He’s just been appointed Head of the Institute for Design, Product and Materials at the Royal Danish Academy.(congratulations Nick!)
Who says a phone has to look like a phone? When large companies are willing to take risks in fostering creativity, exploration, and material innovation, it benefits everyone! Way before the iPhone (launched in 2007), Tej Chauhan with the Nokia Design Team available to him, came up with the Nokia 7600 and 7280 as part of the Nokia Fashion Collection in 2004.
The 7280, or Lipstick Phone was conceived as a small, wearable device you might take to dinner or a party. No number buttons to push but controlled with the click wheel and display screen (that fades to a mirror when inactive for checking lipstick, of course!) Slide it open, there’s a camera (very Minox!). Ring tones were exclusively composed and when it rings it glows a soft red! Too much
Fortune Magazine’s Best 25 Products of 2004.
nasty truth
Another great show at ICP - The Great Acceleration documenting the rapid rise of human impact on our planet over 40 years. We’ve long been fans of Edward Burtynsky’s fantastic aerial photos of beautifully terrible places on Earth, so it’s great to see these together. If you can get there, check it out in person to get an idea of the scale.
This is only a detail of this scene - it’s immense! Zooming in, you can see men working. Thousands of miners dig with simple tools and bare hands for traces of cobalt in the tailings* from an industrial copper mine. Cobalt is a key ingredient in rechargeable batteries. It is likely that the phone in your pocket contains some from mines like this one in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
*tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction of an ore.
on the phone
calling home
In the world before cell phones and texting, you could write, tape a stamp on(!) and send a postcard to tell your parents not to wait in the driveway.
Dear Mom Dad Aaron - We’re coming, but don’t look for us until we get there.
Love Jim and Sharon, Michael, David, Robert
The card was to keep Mom happy - ‘The perfect server to dress up any table, featuring condiment jars with grained wooden tops and toast colored DIY "fish-net" trim.’ That’s 1966 for you.
Steve, I’ve spent hours contemplating an Edward Burtynsky exhibit showing at The Minnesota Marine Art Museum. A favorite when I’m touring kids is “Step-well #1, Nahargarh Cistern, Jiapur, India, 2010”. They can examine and talk about it (and write about it) at length.