I know where my black MacBook is going after I swap it for one of those new Airs (you owe me, Mum and Dad!), but what happens after? Luckily MIT is sticking GPS trackers on gadgets, following their eventual conclusions.
Run by MIT’s SENSEable City Lab, the Backtalk project will culminate in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC titled “Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects,” opening on July the 24th.
Tracking refurbished laptops, mobile phones, printer cartridges and even batteries by GPS (and in the laptops’ case, software that captures images of its surroundings on the inbuilt webcam), the details are sent to the MIT team in real-time, for number-crunching and the eventual conclusion that yes, our planet is doomed. [MIT via Engadget]