GAFFTA Talk on Decay of Digital Things

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http://decay.io/intro/ In the biological world, Decay is a physical phenomenon where materials become a simpler form of material and energy. But in the culture of making objects, decay is a multidimensional problem. The physical decay of an object fails to sync up to the behavioural, cultural, or digital decay of that thing. Decay becomes the natural output of an ecosystem of use, disuse, and obsolescence not dictated by material, but by software and consumer expectation from software behaviour. This decay is taking the form of obsolescence and apathy: a world of forgotten things with short lifespans and nowhere to go afterwards. The danger is that culture rot is claiming the utility of objects before material rot ever does, and the physical casings that held the once functional circuits and software can take an eternity to decay. To combat this, decay must be reframed as inherent to the value of an object. This can be done by situating time as something that adds value (or detracts by its absence), and by challenging the emerging anonymity and replaceability of network connected objects. We want to enable a graceful ecosystem of creation, decay, and rebirth in a software-infested and thing-saturated world.

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