Flashkus
Soon the flash card will evolve into a disposable form. All electronics will be contained on the tip of a detachable cardboard module.
The Russian Art Lebedev Studio latest design comes in a form of a disposable cardboard USB stick called Flashkus.
Made out of cardboard stock material, this USB stick comes in sets of four and its already separated by easy to break perforation. The paper surface allows you to easily write on the drives.
Straight forward and minimal, I like that.
- 03.03.2011 .
- Benoit Raimbault .
- Tags .
- Category:
- Industrial design
- Object:
- USB stick
- Designer:
- Artemy Lebedev
- Share .
- 17 comments
How does it hold up being put in pockets, bags and other such scruffy places? Quite sexy anyway!
I don’t get the part “Soon the flash card will evolve into a disposable form”.
Does this mean throwing it away after usage? Why would one do that? I’m perfectly happy with the one I have for about 6 years now…
From one point of view, it’s rather clever, since it uses less resources. From another, introducing more disposable items into the system is a questionable strategy. I kind of like the idea that I can leave behind a USB stick to a client, but then again, I can do that anyway. Hm. Not sure.
We throw far too much away as it is!
It’s the replacement for the floppy disk and writable CD-ROM: media of convenient capacity, cheap enough you don’t worry about trying to hang on to it for 6 years (or even 6 hours). Current flash drives are still manufactured and sold with the paradigm of long-term individual ownership, vs. the “here, have a copy, don’t worry about returning the media” paradigm of removable cheap bulk media past. You’d buy floppies by the case; let’s do the same for flash memories.
This doesn’t mean automatic throwing it away after usage. CD-ROMs were, for their capacity, as cheap as paper and equally non-reusable, so they would be chucked with ease. That’s not the paradigm here. Floppy disks, however, were erasable – cheap enough that you thought nothing of giving one away, yet reusable meant one could serve many purposes by many users. Likewise this product can be bought by the sheet for cheap, and nary a thought against giving one away (helped by the “paper” motif) – but, being erasable and reusable, it may remain in use for a long time, handed from one user to another.
Upshot: disposable, yet equally reusable.
The concept for disposable USB drives is fascinating, as ctd says, being disposable doesn’t mean we have to throw it after one use. also the industry can use this concept by forgetting about CD’s /DVD’s for software included on some hardware and minimize the size and resources on packaging by replacing the disks with flash cards with more capacity and less space required.
Te design of flashkus is pretty good, and the evolution is well justified.
I see. But than the question arrives wether cardboard usb sticks can last lang enough or if everybody sees them the way we see papercups (to name just an example). What I mean is; when something is cheap and looks cheap people will deal with it in a less carefull way, meaning it’s thrown away easily meaning more waste. Of course cardboard is easily recycable but producing it still consumes resources (wood, energy). The question would be if this is more than making a (longer lasting) plastic drive.
But I think we might be focussing too much on the enviromental issue here.
Disposable is not the way to do things. Somebody fell asleep here. We need less crap, not more.
And if it has to be disposable, the various materials are going to have to be easily separated from each other for easy recycling.
Is it in production?…
Kind of interesting. Like others, I’m not sure wether this would lead to less or more waste. I’d imagine I myself wouldn’t be able to just toss one in the trash, as my mind is already set on the idea of technology having significantvalue. The next generationhowever may not share my ethics.
I’ll be an old guy yelling, “You know, back in my day we didn’t throw flash storage in the trash!”
as my kids/grandkids will roll their eyes and ignore me.
I can certainly see the applications for something like this. Being able to conveniently share the same resources with a number of students in a school, for example, and allowing them to easily share resources with you.
At any rate, how many people lose their current flash drives, and have to replace them? Children, who need such devices, are probably the worst offenders, and its them I see as the most viable market for something like this.
As long as it is not damaging to produce, and easy to recycle, I don’t see the dilemma.
This is a good looking USB-stick! Though I would much rather see that we move away from storing it directly on a physical object. If the purpose is to share information I would much rather see someone design a card with a simple RFID-tag/QR-code/URL that reference to a file in the ‘cloud’. Then it would be disposable in the same way as business card or a printed copy of the information.
@Mattias: I really hope it doesn’t go this way. The cloud is so unresponsible. I wouldn’t keep my CDs at someone else’s house. Why would I let my virtual data be looked after by people that aren’t even friends’o'mine?
@Derek: I think you misunderstood me slightly. I’m talking about the data that are meant to be shared. Like a brochure, business card, great new song that you’ve made, the report you’ve written, etc. that you need to hand over to a colleague, business-partner, friend, etc.
Which if you’ve used a USB-stick give them the data you’ll most likely never see that piece of electronic again, and it will probably end up in a drawer somewhere, unwanted and useless. My previous boss has a box full of USB-sticks with sales material on, all from potential business partners given to him at exhibitions and such. All the data is stored away on his computer, but the USB-sticks remain unused.
If we could use the cloud for this, and only pass around links to where the data could be downloaded from. I think that we could minimize the useless electronics and get away with some recyclable paper being recycled.
And you can maintain your own cloud if yo wish to. Though I don’t think you need to be afraid of some ‘evil-cloud-guards’.
I like the way you can customize it with your own drawing. I want to buy it.
Great design I like the way its so thin at the top of the USB. I was a bit confused at first as to why it was so thin, thinking that all USB sticks had to have the big metal bit which slots into a USB port but after seeing this I realized that actually you only need the data chip bit at the top, which this USB just has, I realized this after seeing the photo (above) of how it fits into the standard USB port. If all USBs were made like this, this thin, then products like the apple ipad could fit USB ports on the side. But only if all USBs were made to be like this. These type of USBs would also still fit into the standard USB ports like what is shown in the photos.
I use Dropbox because the best flash drive is no flash drive.