This BBC piece about an electric car-rental service in Cordoba, Spain called “Blobjects” is straight of out a Bruce Sterling novel. Bruce coined popularized the term blobject to refer to curvilinear, mass-produced products, as part of his Viridian Green movement.
The founder of Blobjects heard Bruce speak and went out and started this electric-car rental company that rents out cars with Linux-based tour-guide software and a GPS. The firm is funded by the local Communist Party government, which is actively funding entrepreneurial ventures (priceless quote: “Well, it’s the communism of the future. It’s a communism that moves logically toward something that is very different than what it used to be.”)
The company rents the electric cars to tourists in Cordoba, as a safe, convenient, and environmentally friendly way to see the town. It costs about US$50 (£28) for a two-hour rental.
The Gems turn heads as they cruise along the city streets. The cars have a top speed of about 20mph (32Km/h), so scooters whip right by you.
But Mr Romeo contends that slow is better for sight-seeing anyway. And besides, he says, there are the extras.
Each Blobject car comes with a touch-screen computer system mounted in the dash. Through a USB port, you can plug in a flash drive containing information on Cordoba in Spanish, English or French. By using GPS technology, the computer keeps track of exactly where you are in the city.
When you pass a certain landmark, the computer then knows to display the appropriate text, audio and video information about that landmark on the screen.
The computer system is based on open source software developed by a company in Seville, Spain. As with any open source software, anyone can improve and change Blobject’s code, as long as those improvements and changes are shared with others.
(Thanks, David!)
Update: Alan sez, “as the Wikipedia entry itself points out, design critic Steven Skov Holt is seen as the coiner of the term. This year he mounted a show of amorphous and blobby design at the San Jose Museum, their first design show ever. And I edited the book/catalog that he and his wife Mara Holt Skov–with contributions by Bruce and Phil–to accompany the show.