Monday, January 16, 2006

Example of Back Remediation


"At the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Sungho Son, a graduate student in industrial design at Purdue University, took home the Judge's Award [read: Microsoft] for a prototype "bookshelf" computer, which uses interchangeable components roughly the shape and size of a hardbound book to simplify management of digital content and copyrights."

Interesting that back remediation is being utilized to re-address digital rights management and copyright issues in hardware design:

"The winners received top marks from the judges because they directly addressed challenges faced by the PC industry and users, making intangible concepts such as digital copyrights more concrete for the average user.

The prototype PC developed by Son and his advisor Scott Shim, IDSA, an assistant professor of industrial design at Purdue, allows users to add hard-disk drive (HDD) attachments to a shelf-like enclosure with a central processing unit. To watch movies, listen to music or play a computer game, people would purchase, borrow or rent secure hardware attachments with preloaded content-management functions. Digital content could be downloaded from a provider's server - but not transferred to - a compatible PC by slipping the attachment into the expandable shelf unit."

from the Industrial Designers of America (IDSA)website.

Lawrence Lessig wrote in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace that the one 100% certain method for content control in digital media is through hardware development. I wonder if anyone will buy it??????

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