Maeda's SIMPLICITY

Come Near My Pretty ...

Light at the end of the terminal.

I'm a third of the way through my MBA program now. Because of the experience, I am always curious about the whole universe of physical products (versus virtual ones) as they help to illustrate a variety of eventualities in the virtual world.

I was talking about supply chain management with someone at Herman Miller recently and he told me a story about why GE still makes lightbulbs. Lightbulbs are light in weight, but take a disproportionate amount of space. Furthermore they are extremely fragile. From a logistics point of view, the costs of transporting these goods are quite high. Thus GE still makes lightbulbs in the US because it's simply still too expensive for the Chinese to manufacture and distribute a lightbulb in the United States. Imagine that! It also says something about the future of lighting, when LED's become the dominant means of lighting our spaces. LED's are small, tolerant to high degrees of shock (note the row of red LED's that are usually mounted on the brake light of the trunk area), and as a technology is finally coming down in cost per lumen.

I'm always attracted to light. I identify with flies. Light is often what we associate with hope. At the airport recently it was late, and I was depressed. I saw this strange lit area in the terminal (with no entrance). Immediately drawn to it, I felt safe near its warmth. Luckily it wasn't like one of those bug lamps where you get zapped and electrocuted ...

We continue with the theme of light tomorrow.

Posted by maeda at March 16, 2005 11:44 AM