Most people talk about social networking sites like Facebook as a purely electronic phenomenon, but one designer has turned Facebook status updates into something tangible.
Steve Murray, a designer from Dundee, Scotland, has created the Facebook Box.
The Facebook box “explores the possibility of a physical social network by keeping every piece of digital activity as a physical document,” a press release by the designer says. “This creates a new way to use social networks and establishes that social networking no longer needs to be restricted to the confines of a digital display. This makes social networking a much more tangible experience and gives deeper meaning to the process.”
The box consists of a small printer (the same kind that prints your fast food receipts) and three different places to file your status updates: a place for friends, a place for family, and even a place for “frapes.” (A quick check of Urban Dictinoary defines a “frape” a fake humorous status update issued from an inattentive user who’s walked away from a computer without logging out of the site.) It listens for activity on your wall and lights up once it’s detected, letting you retrieve your print out and file it in the correct place.If you buy one of these boxes, you can customize the partitions to your liking.
The box is styled similar to Facebook’s branding. The box shown in the photos has Murray’s name on it, but you can get yours with your own name on it, of course. I wonder if Facebook could hire Murray and start selling the boxes themselves. There might be a market for dead-tree social networking out there.
By the way, Steve Murray’s page is hooked up to his Facebook box, so why not drop him a note? He’ll be sure to file it in the correct place.
For another real world extension of Facebook, see our posts on Facebook Cigarettes and the Facebook “Like” button stamp.
Via: Gearlog/Steve Murray Design
