Design January 2025
A return to the blog is long overdue. 2025 is a year of significant change across many dimensions so I am taking some time to go back to the earliest motivations and inspirations for practice. When I returned to Ireland from the US in 1990I had an inclination to establish a multi-disciplinary practice. In the very early years of salaried employment I instead began exploring non-traditional design problems. Open Idea Competitions like Forma Finlandia offered wild card platforms to think and dream without boundaries. By 1994 I established Synthetic Reality (inventive design) as a vehicle for these activities in parallel with setting up NJBA A+U (towards an integrated environment). These activities are now being folded into Parenthesis Research ltd.. As part of an archiving project I unearthed one of my earliest projects, which was devised in 1992, and later was subject of a conversation with Apple (Ireland) in 1995. NDA’s were signed but there has been such significant progress in the meantime as to make this more a historical curiosity and insight into what might have been.
In the early 1990’s telecommunication devices were slowly evolving alongside the new digital technologies. Handsets would soon be liberated to become mobile and by the end of the 1990’s the first PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistants) emerged. The Nokia 2110 was launched in 1996 which ‘provided e-mail; calendar, address book, calculator and notebook applications; text-based Web browsing; and could send and receive faxes. When closed, the device could be used as a digital cellular telephone’. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone).
In 1992 it was against this backdrop that the Databook proposal was pitched, which brought together some of the elements that have become synonymous with Smartphones today, Camera, Recorder and Notes. There was nothing similar in the industry when I approached Apple in 1995. There was no evidence that the iPhone was even a consideration.
From the original text that accompanied the design in 1992.
‘The Digital Databook is for use in areas where it is may be necessary to record notes, sketches and speech. The Databook can be used with the need for mains electricity. It carries its own rechargeable battery. The functional aspects of the Databook have been kept to a minimum. Instead the operator may quickly record his/her observations. on returning to base these files may be downloaded onto a PC or Laptop Computer. The Databook recharges at the same time. The basic structure of the Databook allows for the development of scanners and camera like elements expanding the Databook to become the complete surveyors’ tool. Useful for police and emergency services the Databook can be easily carried in a pocket. The plastic chassis allows circuit boards to be fully supported while providing the necessary protection.’
Looking back now at the approach to launch a Minimally Viable Product in 1992 prefigures the Lean Start-up methodology that is prevalent today. That coupled with its combination of different functions in the same device or platform appears anachronistic. It was 2000 before Sharp produced and released the J-SH04 a phone with a camera and the multi-functional Smartphone platform would not appear until the launch of the iPhone in 2007, 12 years after my approach to Apple in 1995. If only…
This is a curiosity from the vaults, unique in its offering, even if limited in deliverables, but a signpost to the dynamic nature of the early 1990’s and beyond. Today with the astronomical explosion in computer power and sophisticated interfaces, high quality resolution cameras and recording, the Databook appears like a toy, a relic of ancient technology. Who knows where the conversation with Apple could have gone. That, they say, is another story. There have been many stories since, but a new horizon beckons. Here’s to 2025 and new destinations.
Noel Brady CEO Parenthesis Research Ltd.
