Early Research Experiments And Learned Lessons

The Junk Shelf and the Bulletin Board

Jaki spent some time organizing the junk shelf. He categorized the shelf into kinds of parts and level hacked-ness. Here are some of his photos and documentation:

• inventory of the Junk Shelf
  • Jaki decided there are 5 stages of hacked-ness - with 1 being most useful and 5 being on its way to a landfill
  • 1. still together
    2. torn, but still with case, identifiable
    3. torn, no case, still on board, but isolated
    4. missing components, not really working, a few usable components
    5. a piece or wire. It is not usable. Incinerate it or decorate it
    blog

After organizing the shelf, it quickly devolved back to the state of a junk shelf. State of the Junk Nov 30th We interviewed Todd Holoubek and some interesting ideas came out of that conversation.

• Hacking is a skill, and there are best practices that can make the most out of old electronics
• Alice spent an afternoon carefully taking apart an old VCR.
  • photos of the parts are here

What she learned was that she purchases new parts because she:

• A) lacks the skills to properly identify parts
• B) it takes a long time to carefully take apart old parts

For someone like her to consider reuse of electronic components viable, she would need the following skills:

• how to identify parts
• what parts are commonly found in which items
• desoldering skills
• Hacking Resources

Alice purchased magnets for a bulletin board. With the approval of shop staff and with the help of Angela and Jaki we posted some offers to the bulletin board to see if a 'barter culture' could be encouraged. The bulletin board failed to take off. This could have been due to either the wrong timing, not enough communication, or simply lack of interest. Perhaps this particular community uses electronic (email listserve) technology more than analog (bulletin board) technology. gimmeGotit Board

Alice went to a Freecycle/Earth Matters Event to learn about barter culture. Alice met freecyclers who hack and donate old electronics because they believe in keeping ewaste out of the landfills. This led to an awareness of the e-waste problem and began a new direction in our research. We have dedicated a whole topic section to ewaste.

here are photos of the FreeMeet Note that the parts have been carefully taken apart and organized for people. The donaters find that this is necessary in order for people who don't understand computers well to accept the donations. They also spend a great deal of time and effort in educating the people who take their goods and choose their giftees carefully. sorted tech stuff

Alice also met with Jeremy Freidman from GreenArch and learned that there is a great interest in creating an NYU community freecycle/craigslist type resource. The problems with a 'Materials for the Arts' type repository, in Jeremy's opinion is that the University and Manhattan in general lacks the space for storage.

• Adam Brock began a project NYU listings for a NYU community barter board

In speaking with other students at ITP, what was learned was

• A) The timing for the board was not appropriate -- better at the start of the semester or at the end, when all the supplies are gone
• B) In this culture (ITP) a web board is probably a better solution

Materials For the Arts Jaki met with Harriet, the director for Materials for the Arts. One of the problems her organization has is picking up materials. Oftentimes, she gets a call about materials she simply cannot pickup for lack of drivers or lack of trucks. She constantly has to put people on a waitlist of 2-3 weeks to make larger pickups.

He asked how NYU could help. She said one of the bigger problems and possible solutions for resusing materials locally within an institution is to get departments talking to each other. She suggested a few things:

1. Schedule a time + place for material pickup. People throw away stuff all the time. Perhaps if it is a big office move, or there is some larger trash dump, making these departments aware of other "dumping options" is key. If we had a central colleting station, MFTA could then pickup the materials once a month and bring them to their warehouse.

2. Have a virtual exchange board - a gimme / got it board for NYU. If a department is getting rid of lots of stuff, a virtual board would make things much easier for exchange - similar to wastematch.org. The NYU community barter board fits into this realm

Harriet also has a direct donor program - this is where MFTA acts as a broker between organizations and individuals.

In order to APPLY to participate in MFTA, ITP must fill this out:

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