Open letter to
Lebedev et al:
Saw the http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/flashkus/ Flashkus USB flash drive concept. This is a very inexpensive (pennies) USB drive made primarily from cardboard (the electronics will still be electronics, although presumably small in quantity), and intentionally designed to be disposable.
I just wanted to point out that this is a great art concept but a terrible idea for an actual product for a number of reasons.
- Lebedev seems to be confused about what parts of the USB drive are the expensive parts. I already have several “disposable” drives like this that came glued to an advertisement inside a magazine (for Cadillac cars) some years ago. The burdened cost of them was probably pennies each (otherwise they’d be too expensive for an advertising campaign). These little devices are exactly the width and height of the “fingers” end of a USB slot, about four times the length of a USB slot and have a teensy hole at the other end, which you can use to attach a little fob so you can find the damn thing (because it’s so small). The ones I have that came from the campaign are plastic.
- Manufacturers of USB drives (usually the same factory as the one that makes the semiconductors) already have facilities and machinery for dealing with plastic and ceramic packaging (the most common sorts of packaging for integrated circuits). There’s no business incentive to invest in new facilities and machinery for dealing with cardboard packaging, especially when the profit margins are going to be even lower than the traditional packaging.
- The manufacturers of semiconductors are already in a desperate battle to wring any profit at all out of the commodity market they’re in. These manufacturers have no interest in driving down the price even further. The price of a 4G drive is dictated by competitive market forces, not by whether the case is plastic or cardboard.
- Making the case cardboard will cause real and serious environmental harm. Users will be prone to dispose of it in the “paper” recycling stream. Which will introduce the rare-earth metals that are extremely hazardous and should be sent into the “electronics recycling” stream into post-consumer recycled products. Like the paper cup you drink your latte from Starbucks(tm) in. I don’t want to be drinking coffee from such a cup.
- Most nations are only now starting to realize that electronics needs to be a first-class recycling stream, as easy for the consumer to access (put things into) as paper recycling and plastic recycling. In America, at least, electronics recycling is still hard and exceptional (you have to take it yourself someplace special), whereas paper and plastic are easy (happens at the curbside). Intentionally designing products that end up in the wrong stream is criminally negligent.
-Barry Dobyns
barry@dobyns.com
