collision detection: I vant to be alone

September 14, 2005

I vant to be alone

In our fast-moving, email-pinging, mobile-phone-ringing world, privacy is a hard thing to come by. For those times when you desperately need to shut the world out, hie thee to an Ocula -- the ultimate in personal-boundaries technology! As the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue describes it:

This private relaxation theater is handmade of fiberglass and integrates advanced audio, visual, seating, and environment technologies, as well as your choice of Macintosh or PC computer, to create a space that allows you to relax completely. The Oculas has an electronic door that closes silently at a touch, coccooning a sitter inside the well-lit interior, which is upholste red with leather seating for comfort and completely ventilated for continual airflow that prevents stale air without compromising external noise reduction. An electronic controller allows the user to adjust the light through a complete spectrum of hues and brightness levels for optimal reading, video-watching, or relaxation and sleeping.

Only $45,000 apiece, earthlings. The mind boggles at the potential applications. Rather than have cubicles at work, wouldn't it rock to have your office filled with these things? Then every morning everyone shows up, says hello, grabs a coffee -- and seals themselves into an egg. Your company would look like one of the breeding-ground scenes from Alien. And man, I think about some of the programmers I know ... if you could instal some sort of built-in bathroom technology and a feeding-tube apparatus, hell, they'd sit there coding and wouldn't come out for a week.

(Thanks to the Book of Joe for this one!)

Posted by Clive Thompson at September 14, 2005 09:31 PM

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Comments

Hmmmmmmm. Other than at the office or for cults, does this have any real application in the real world? No? Oh well. When I hit the jackpot I'm buying 10 of them, and if you are nice to me I'll let you in for a couple of days.

Posted by: Jasontheperson at September 15, 2005 1:06 AM

Woo!

Posted by: Clive at September 15, 2005 1:13 AM

I think it's funny that something designed to sheild us from the "fast-moving, email-pinging, mobile-phone-ringing world" comes equipped with a computer and audiovideo gear. Seems to me like it should be dark, silent and womb-like.

Or maybe come with wheels and a jet engine. Yeah, that would seriously rock! Oh and the coffee tube is a must.

I do like the idea of an office that looks like the set of Alien...

Posted by: johntunger at September 15, 2005 2:26 AM

The next few proposals I do for workspace designs are each going to include one of these as a 'punishment pod' for workers who turn up late, put awful music on the office stereo, or have body odour issues.

Posted by: Tony at September 15, 2005 4:40 AM

I agree with johntunger; this is not geared toward privacy or relaxation, but toward creating a space with an unrelenting focus on the machines that bombard us with sensory input. If the computer has no wireless card or ethernet port, then maybe it gets closer. Yuck, anyway. Whatever happened to the simple tradition of spending a half hour in the can? Which reminds me...bbl

Posted by: braine at September 15, 2005 9:44 AM

uh, not to sound too gross or anything, but this thing reeks of a pr0n viewing, masturbatory lounge for the jet-set.

Posted by: garthbreaks at September 15, 2005 12:08 PM

Ahahha!

I agree, it's a bit weird to make it all about privacy, then to wire it to the hilt.

I wonder if you spent a couple of days in there, whether you'd start to have Altered States-style isolation-induced hallucinations.

Posted by: Clive at September 15, 2005 12:32 PM

This is a fantastic idea for study halls. No more annoyance at the sounds other people drinking water, scraping the pencils across paper, or if they are evil enough to bring their laptops - the king of all annoying sounds; the clickety-click from keyboards in their wrong environments.

And WHAT a great propaganda for the universities:

"This is where we hatch tomorrows intellectuals"

Posted by: eke at September 15, 2005 12:48 PM

Kind of reminds me of these:

http://www.metronaps.com/

... less privacy, but cheaper.

Posted by: Nez at September 15, 2005 3:32 PM

eke, ahahhah!

Nez, yes, I blogged about those last year. I thought of them too!

Posted by: Clive at September 15, 2005 10:02 PM

The last person whose brain is not in a vat is a rotten egg.

Posted by: daniel luke at September 15, 2005 11:08 PM