It is time to get environmental again, and I want to do that pointing out to a new video send to me by a fellow designer Bernardo van de Schepop (Valeu!!).

The video, part of the website The story of Stuff,aims to expose the inner workings of consumer culture and clarify the dangers of not seeing the bigger picture when it comes to ecology. Story of stuff is a short but powerful video on what I like to call the ecology of products. Unlike many of the videos and manifestations “pro” environment, Story of stuff puts consumer culture as part of the problem, bringing interesting insights to the Eco-Dilemma. The video is 20 minutes long and it is a definitely “must see” for everyone on board of our planet.

After watching the video and thinking about my role as a designer, I do fear of my work feeding up this system of consumption even more. But as a romantic idealistic dude, I dream of the time where create, hack and modify will be the words on the streets, a time when people remix more than buy. When this day comes you will know we have moved from the “you are what you buy society” to the “you are what you make or modify society”.

Do you think I am going too far on this? well take 3 minutes to read this great post at the ponoko blog about the GENERATION C ( “C” standing for digitaly created content) and you will maybe start to believe that this dream isn`t as far as we think.

Lets Evo.

Source:

A great blog post about Story of Stuff explains the motivations of the project.
The Story of Stuff video can also be seen in chapters on a youtube channel.

R. Buckminster Fuller, was one of the most fascinating thinkers of our last century. In his words he dedicated his life in applying the principles of science to solving the problems of humanity . He was an inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician, poet and cosmologist. Buckminster Fuller´s best known invention was the geodesic dome – the lightest, strongest and most cost-effective structure ever created. He is known for terms like synergetics which he explains as the holistic relationship between forces in nature. In this brilliant video taken at a series of lectures he gave along two weeks in january of 1975, bucky explains his thoughts, and inventions in relationship to the development of technology in our socio-economic present state.

It’s a 42 hour trip into his thoughts! I still didn´t see the whole video, I didn´t even get to the middle of it, but I think every one interested in understanding the mind of this great person should take a look inside. I am also thinking of writing to the institute that made the video avaliable to ask if there is a podcast version of it because being 42 hours in front of the computer is somewhat painful ( everything runs under a Real video format at the website). Maybe some one knows a way of generating mp3 or .mov data from Real video??

Buckminster Fuller’s Everything I know