Can society encourage systems and modularity?

• Legislation might favour products that continue in production for more than three (5?) years. VAT could diminish with every extra year.
• Legislation could favour re-engineering of parts.
• Legislation could favour services over manufactured goods with differential taxation.
• Insurance might be encouraged to view systems insurance as a lower risk than integrated products due to the lower cost of repair.
  
• The WEE directive
• Iconic design
  

Technology sometimes doesn't deliver a cheaper solution

Technology sometimes doesn't deliver a cheaper solution. Marketeers don't like this. The lazy so-and-sos are probably the least inventive group of individuals in business and their view of technology is that its there to give them an easy time, i.e. to give them the same stuff as the other guy only cheaper. In this way you piggyback on the other guy's marketing and merely undercut him to win the biz.

Because of this a lot of great technology is ignored. Technology might yield a more efficient or long lasting solution. It might yield a more versatile product etc.

Who owns the New Topologies?

The major obstacle to creating "The New Toplogies" is the lack of single ownership of the realestate upon which the edifices are to be built. The new Topologies cut across existing market sectors and technology platforms, stealing business, and confounding existing standards. Further, single ownership of a new topology brings the intimitaditing problem of scale and the variety-of-resources-needed to carry through such grandiose schemes.

So, two key problems.... First is the scale of the resource requirement, second the thwarting of other people's business interests......And there you have it, the solution to the first problem lies in the second problem. Companies will need to work together.

Topological Surgery

One of the strengths of viewing functions as part of systems is the potential to perform "topological surgery". Not so much cutting things out as re-arranging them. By re-arranging elements within a system better performance can be created. This may be as simple as improving ergonomics or reducing losses by shortening cables, or improving reliability by separating heat generators from the heat sensitive. Such changes are quite likely to offer what everyone wants...lower cost products. (Higher reliability gets traded for cheaper components!)

But another kind of rearrangement is possible, a rearrangement where the myriad of components in a product may be grouped into modules. What for? ...Servicing!...and its admirable pre-emptive brother,.. Maintenance. These old-fashioned ideas have been lost in the rush to reduce the costs of individual products. ("This product contains no user serviceable parts.) But here's an interesting thing. It is often the desire of modern electronic engineers to get an IC made that integrates the function of two or more other ICs or semiconductor components. One bigger part should be cheaper than the two separate parts that make it up, and anyway there's less to assemble. In fact, more often than not the two separate parts are the cheaper solution, because they're more general purpose and therefore sell in much greater volume. If we modularize our products with care we might be able to identify and share some modules between product, thereby pushing their volume up and their cost down.

But maintenance is the biggest key of all..

Once we have modules...some of these might become infra-structure

Does rapid change preclude the possibility of "systems"?

Yes. Or rather, yes, if you get too close to any one function. The trick is to step back from the function you are considering and try and see it in a broader context. Several steps may be required until immediately pertinent context stops being added.

If we take for example PDAs, we can see that they are rapidly changing. We can also see that their immediate function of organising/ managing and presenting information is only the beginning of what they might do. If we take a step back we can see all manner of overlapping capabilities ocurring with other portable devices. Mobile phones, cameras, portable entertainment, WiFi, laptops, or, indeed, a watch. In fact we can see that eventually there should be a portable Gizmo that integrates any/all of these capabilities as we require. In our analysis of these overlapping capabilities we might now separate them in terms of the technology required to deliver the various underlying functions. These would be, for example,-

• Display (small discreet, large detailed)
• Audio (personal, public)
• data storage
• data processing
• Wireless to telecomms/internet
• local wireless link
• data input devices (keyboard, microphone, camera)

The question now has to be asked, "What if our portable gizmo were made of these elements in some seperable form?" (Yes, exactly like a PC.)

Well before looking at the problems, lets look at the potential gains. Upgrading elements allows better technology to be added without trashing the rest. It allows versions of elements to be used depending on anticipated circumstance of use. It creates a system more likely to (cheaply) adapt to new functions like-

• Personal Indentity Authorisation
• Payment/ purchase functions
• Remote control of your environment
• Navigation

What of the problems? Well, the first is packaging. How to manage a variable bunch of things that somehow need to interconnect. Won't the result be big and ugly? Won't it cost more?

Taking the second point first. Yes, it will cost more...in the short term. The real point in all this is to take the long view about costs. Ultimately not throwing as much stuff away will be cheaper. The first problem, however, brings us right to the heart of the need for an inventive step to make it all, somehow, work as an idea.

Notes towards the solution-

• Very short range wireless linking of elements (in the style of wristwasches, pens, wallets, earphones, glasses etc.)
  
• Autonomous powering of elements
• Contactless recharge of elements. Wired clothes. (Energy harvesting where possible.)
• Remote execution of functions, rented as required.
• High bandwidth link
• Remote bulk storage.
• Homepage organiser.
• "Windows" for audio to enhance information management without screens
• Linking to home/office I/O devices
  

Doing it right - An Example

Consider a HiFi system of the 1970s or 1980s. The best systems were modular. Real HiFi snobs would buy modules from a variety of vendors, some of them, tiny companies specializing in only one type of module, e.g. a loudspeaker or a turntable. Many of these systems had a long life, because upgrading was a piecemeal affair. Real improvements were made at different times for the different modules, so many of the parts were retained for quite extended periods.

This system approach had many advantages to the user, not least the modest, distributed cost of the upgrading process. But perhaps, particularly useful was the value of function evolution rather than revolution. Changing one element at a time, reveals the true value/quality change associated with each of the components and if a mistake is made it is easier to put right.

A curious feature of this kind of ownership was that it was the SAME HiFi despite its changing parts. It had some sort of continuous identity, becoming more itself. It had some sort of LIFE.

During the period, a particularly vigorous trade in second hand parts existed because of this piecemeal upgrading, extending the life of the components considerably. Indeed the highest quality parts are still traded, because in some sense or another they still represent value.

Making less stuff

This blog will cover my ideas on how we might develop as a society whilst dramatically reducing the amount of stuff that gets manufactured and subsequently trashed. The ideas presented will only be deemed useful, if they don't significantly affect the general public adversely. I will assume austerity is not an option here because, in our fragmented global society, collective action that has an adverse effect has proven itself impossible to implement.

The ideas will centre around how people can own the things that they want without the need of relentless trashing. People want up-to-the minute products, so how can this be done? And, anyway, how will products and services advance if the old and outdated aren't replaced? An unspoken assumption in the Darwinian process of evolution is the timely death of all that went before.

Two of the core ideas here are systems and modularity. Products are not merely a single isolated thing. They sit within a framework of other products with complementary and sometimes overlapping functions. They themselves constitute a system of elements, only some of which are innovatory at any one time.


A further idea is that of "bespoke mass production". This is different from mass customization which is a narrow thing in essence (i.e. ticking boxes on the menu/spec sheet of your next car). Bespoke MP depends on using the likes of multi-material 3D printing, low-temperature ink-jet manufacturing of displays and electronics and inket bio-printing all driven by expert system CADCAM, with which the customer can interface directly.

Another idea is about purchasing services rather than stuff. For example, the discarded idea of PCs being replaced by mere terminals, constantly online with a server may be ready for dusting off and reconsidering. Broadband data rates now exceed HDTV data rates, so any remote storage and processing of (remotely derived) data can be more than adequately monitored or enjoyed. Only local publishing of gigabit size files will be hampered by delay.

And a final idea is about the physical things we live amongst; that they be driven by aesthetic / ergonomic functions. That objects are retained as beautiful (or whatever), whilst their functional aspects may evolve independently.

This latter is a big change for me. I used to be a staunch form-follows-function chap. Now I am advocating that a device (a PDA let us say) should have a physical manifestation that is innately precious to its owner and thereby treasured beyond its function. In this way the perniciousness of fashion might be avoided. Further, the device's external appearance will no longer signal the degree of its function.

What I do like about this latter idea is the scuppering of one of the marketeers tools..."Ashamed of your mobile phone?" as one TV ad asked. A far more ecological tool would be an ad asking..."Ashamed of the quality of your phone service?"