Deep Dive
Toward Maximum Well-being
The thesis behind Gentle Future. Five design principles for the shift from tools that do more to objects that know when to stop.
Bose Killed the Cloud. A $5 Chip Pretends to Be It.
When Bose pulled the plug on SoundTouch, six preset buttons went dark across thousands of speakers. One maker's $5 ESP32 quietly impersonates the dead service, and the speaker is none the wiser.
Jun 7, 2026
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Diptyx: An Open-Source E-Reader That Folds Shut Like a Book
Most e-readers chase more: color, touch, a storefront in your pocket. This one ships with the WiFi switched off and the full schematics promised to anyone who asks.
Jun 5, 2026
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The Week of the Single Pointer
A wristwatch with one needle, a desk gauge with one needle, a PCB die with one state machine. Plus: CW&T at SHINE, RISD treats consumer objects as religious artifacts, and CHU goes silent in 24 days.
Jun 3, 2026
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The Geometry Was Already in the Stone: Javier Riera's Light Work on Customs House
Spanish artist Javier Riera spends months shaping geometries pulled from shells and honeycombs, then projects them onto a Sydney landmark until the stone seems to reveal a pattern it was hiding all along. Light handled as a tool for noticing, at the scale of a building.
Jun 3, 2026
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TrailNAV — A Navigator That Points You Home and Never Runs Out
A solar-assisted e-ink trail navigator with no cellular radio. It does not show you a map. It points toward home, and keeps pointing for days with no signal and no charger.
Jun 3, 2026
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SixBack — A $5 Chip That Brings Back What Bose Switched Off
Bose shut down the SoundTouch cloud and bricked the preset buttons on speakers people paid up to $1,500 for. A ~$5 ESP32 stick speaks the dead protocol and brings them back.
Jun 3, 2026
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Yamaha Took the Word “Herringbone” Literally. The Amp Grille Is a Fish.
Designer Koji Notomi went to a fish market, bought a herring, and dissected it by hand. The skeleton became the grille of a Yamaha amp, and the etymology of a pattern you have seen a thousand times suddenly snaps into focus.
May 31, 2026
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Hermès Turned Its Tokyo Gallery Into a Club for the Dead. It Closes Sunday.
Andrius Arutiunian's 'Obol' stages a futuristic afterlife in bitumen, silver coins, and synthetic choir, drawing on Greek funeral rites and underground rave aesthetics in equal measure. Five days left to catch the strangest argument for ritual technology in Tokyo this spring.
May 28, 2026
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A Map of the East Bay Where the Roads Are Copper and the Dots Are Family
A wall-hung circuit board where every street is a copper trace and every glowing dot is a person you love. Jonathan turned his family's whereabouts into furniture.
May 25, 2026
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A Butterfly That Flaps With Your Pulse, And Slows When You Do
Calm-tech rendered as a small unhurried toy instead of a wellness device. The pulse drives the wings, the wings teach you to slow the pulse, and the loop is the whole medicine.
May 22, 2026
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A Speaker That Forgot It Was a Speaker
Devon Turnbull's OJAS and Karimoku built a Sound House in Tokyo where speakers are machined from oak and listening rooms follow tea ceremony. When you can't tell where the room ends and the speaker begins.
May 18, 2026
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"Calm" Is Dead. Good.
Samsung built an entire Milan Design Week exhibition around emotion and never once said "calm." The label has died. What replaced it is more interesting.
May 16, 2026
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