We Are Hopelessly Hooked by Jacob Weisberg | The New York Review of Books

Our transformation into device people has happened with unprecedented suddenness. The first touchscreen-operated iPhones went on sale in June 2007, followed by the first Android-powered phones the following year. Smartphones went from 10 percent to 40 percent market penetration faster than any other consumer technology in history. In the United States, adoption hit 50 percent only three years ago. Yet today, not carrying a smartphone indicates eccentricity, social marginalization, or old age.

What does it mean to shift overnight from a society in which people walk down the street looking around to one in which people walk down the street looking at machines? We wouldn’t be always clutching smartphones if we didn’t believe they made us safer, more productive, less bored, and were useful in all of the ways that a computer in your pocket can be useful. At the same time, smartphone owners describe feeling “frustrated” and “distracted.” In a 2015 Pew survey, 70 percent of respondents said their phones made them feel freer, while 30 percent said they felt like a leash. Nearly half of eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-olds said they used their phones to “avoid others around you.”

 

We Are Hopelessly Hooked by Jacob Weisberg | The New York Review of Books

Babel Tower: A Kinetic Mirrored Ziggurat Reflects the Surrounding Iranian Landscape | Colossal

[Very cool, although I think it could be made even better with freer and more organic movement. -egg]

 

Babel Tower is the latest artwork by Shirin Abedinirad (previously) who has become known for her outdoor mirror installations designed to reflect landscapes and elements of architecture. This newest piece, a collaboration with interaction designer Gugo Torelli, adds a kinetic component to a stair-stepped ziggurat that simultaneously reflects elements of the sky, horizon, and ground while slowly rotating 360 degrees. She shares about the piece:

Babel Tower is an interactive installation that recontextualizes the spiritual architecture of the Babel Tower with modern materials, creating a union between ancient history and our present world; it is combing the past, present and offering a union for future. The top view of installation by reflecting the sky is connecting it to the earth, symbolizing the aim of Babel tower to reach for the heaven; The structural use of mirrors, serve as a reflective vessel for light, an integral feature of paradise.

You can see more views of the sculpture on her website, and watch a video of the piece in motion down below. (via Colossal Submissions)

 

Source: Babel Tower: A Kinetic Mirrored Ziggurat Reflects the Surrounding Iranian Landscape | Colossal