"Darwin among the Machines"

Between reading Le Corbusier, writing a paper on Vorticism, and looking at 'the Machine' in my Modern Art class last semester, I've gotten pretty interested in early 20th century writing on the new automatic future. 

Le Corbusier in my opinion got a lot more wrong than he did right, but this letter to the editor from Samuel Butler, published in 1914, has a lot of goofy premises but some uncomfortably plausible ones as well. He basically looks at machinery through a Darwinist perspective, and makes pretty dire predictions about humanity's inevitable subservience to its creations. His solution is to destroy every machine in existence and return to a primeval state. If this is declared impossible, he says, then it is too late and we are already enslaved. Oh well.

Huron OH

April

Toyota Homes

Prefab housing is a tiny portion of the Toyota empire but the company is hoping to see a lot of growth in this industry in the next few years. Prefabricated housing is still a niche market in the United States but in Japan it's the standard in single-family homes. The homes are infinitely customizable, stylish and, more and more, eco-friendly. Assembly takes place largely in factories, and in high-tech home companies like Misawa Homes, assembly may be entirely automated, driving down costs to both producer and consumer.

Toyota Home

Compost Bin

Just finished putting this thing together, with a family of seven it should fill up pretty quickly. Building it went a lot smoother than my little shelter project did, but I had a lot more help this time.

Asimo

I guess I should follow up on this post.