Flux Processing Unit (FPU)
September 13th, 2012 By Adam
There is one big problem with notebooks: they are boring! Computers always used to be challenging devices that ask for creative problem solving and a high sensibility for their dysfunctionality. Today notebooks tend to become more and more this black boxes, emphasizing consume and standardization. It gets hard and hard to imagine them in any different way. Thankfully here comes the Flux Processing Unit (FPU)! The FPU is a hyper-intelligent, charismatic and fun personal computer that has a lifespan inscribed in his very design. The longer the interactor is working or playing with the FPU, the more its falling apart, both on the hardware and software side. It is the perfect challenge for every true hardcore nerd. We are bored of clean and highly subjective computers, we need to get back to the possibility of thinking about their design from different perspectives. The FPU is the perfect tool to emphasize the optimization throughout all layers of society.
The FPU is metadesign for everyone. It is intented to be a giving away for cheap for prototyping purposes and thus allows computer manufactures to monitor the needs and utilizes the creativity of their customers at the same time. It is sold as a living creature, both the hardware and software are falling apart with time. The challenge for the interactor is thus to develop procedurally strategies for overcoming the FPUs collapse.
The FPU comes with 6 separate touch-stereoskopic-high-res-screens and tons of undefined buttons and other input devises. Each of the screens and input devises are detach- and reattachable. During the lifespan of the FPU the interactor will be forced with making a decision: Loosing usability and comfort or rearranging the parts and thus giving it more time. It is likely that most interactors will end up rearranging the parts in ways that make sense for them on the long run, but the FPU is also forcing them to take some risks, especially when they run out of convenient solutions. Additionally it is constantly communicating with all the other FPUs on the planet. There is also a extra feature available, which allows to expant the lifetime of the devise by petting it. This way the interactor has the opportunity to develop a very personally relationship to its FPU.
Every FPU comes with Flux Linux Sickness (FLS), the only operating system compatible with the FPU. This Linux participation is following the lifespan idea on the software side. Here the operation system, with all attached programs, also begins to fall apart and it is up to the interactor to develop procedurally solutions in order to maintain the lifespan of its FPU. One of the first elements that is going to die is the mouse. Thus the first task of the interactor will be to prohibit the mouse from dying. In order to do so he is playfully forced to redesign it.
Additionally every FPU is equipped with the Flux Communication Annoyance (FCA). The FCA makes sure that all FPUs on the planet are constantly communicating and thus allowing for cloud-based computation. If the interactor is maintaining a healthy, and thus very well designed FPU, he might also acquire the right to develop and communicate his own procedurally developed design challenges to other FPUs. The FCA is not only a fun way of annoying each other, it also makes sure that not every single interactor is developing his own solutions for himself, but that the community is procedurally co-developing the future of computation. Thus every single FPU becomes not only a symbol of merging design and user time, but also mirroring the design ideas and challenges of all FPU interactors all over the planet, across time and space, nationalities and social class.
Tags: Open Culture, The Future