Fashionably functional routers and chargers

Image via SlowerInternet.com

Designer Sam Kronick has developed a Cybernetic Meadow. The Meadow is a set of well-designed electronic objects for your home that look very cool and are totally practical; it comes in a set of three hand-constructed products that create a different environment for you and your electronics in the domestic setting. The set of three consists of a smartphone share space with a baby succulent, a photo stand where you can store files on a custom concrete flash drive, and a concrete planter that doubles as a Wi-Fi router.

Kronick realizes that when you store information on your Google drive, it gets catapulted into an intangible cyber land. The designer hopes this system makes your data more tangible and accessible, so you feel like you’re actually in possession of what data you’re storing. His principles through the Cybernetic Meadow include migrating from the “cloud,” where we store our data, to another more personal platform.

Image via Slowerinternet.com

The Cybernetic Meadow is part of “The Consortium for Slower Internet” association, a research lab and design studio for Kronick’s projects. The organization that was invented by Kronick himself bases its standards on promoting a more critical understanding of how the Internet works and the structure that is built upon. He stated that there are objects in each of our homes that mess with the TCP/IP communications of our devices, and that we should know how to adapt each of our electronic products accordingly. With “The Consortium for Slower Internet,” Kronick’s goal is to unite nature and technology in a way that has not been done before. The Cybernetic Meadow physically embodies nature and technology, since these products are plants and tech tools for around the house.

Kronick claims that we can apply the principles of nature to the technological world. He states that “the Cybernetic Meadow proposes an equivalency. How is a succulent like a cell phone? How can computing be more like gardening? We do not need to ‘get back’ to nature. We are, and have always been, already there.” In regards to pure nature, he says that it is “itself wholly synthetic, an ingenious but human invention, and we might do well to consider the finer points of, say, UX design in national parks or interface design of gardening tools — not to ‘improve’ those experiences, but to refine what it is we deem acceptable as far as digital tools are concerned.”

Image via Slowerinternet.com

By using Kronick’s Cybernetic Meadow products, we can simultaneously bring nature and technology into our homes. The only question is, will the radiation from the electronics harm the plants? 

Story via Wired