BUILD YOUR OWN BAG
The current BYOB prototype from MIT
those wacky kids at MIT have built a reconfigurable handbag called BYOB - no, not Bring Your Own Booze as the acronym is commonly known, but BYOB as in “Build Your Own Bag.” the idea is really quite brilliant - with small squares which can be reconfigured and assembled as each person sees fit, the BYOB creators see the project as “a flexible, computational-enhanced modular textile system.”
in their paper they mention several applications, such as object detection- or lighting up when you’ve forgotten your keys or mobile, network detection - or lighting up when an open wireless node is available (like WifiSense or the Hotspot Bloom - see my blog post about these projects) and, environmental changes - meaning lighting up when it gets dark or vice versa - their example reminds me of Rachel Wingfield’s Digital Dawn and Light Sleeper (to see a photo of Digital Dawn from my blog click and scroll down). It’s very clever how they\’ve cherry-picked ideas across such a wide spectrum of works and come up with such smart packaging. (EDIT: I’m sure there are applications out there that wouldn’t only require the bag to “go blinkie?”)
The project will be on demo at UBICOMP 2004. Jonah and I will be there with UMBRELLA.net - but in the poster session - so i’ll get some pix and post.