The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch

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I would recommend “The Toaster Project” to anybody that appreciates looking at things in a different perspective. I say this, because this book is very thought provoking, in the way that it takes technology we are all familiar with, takes it, and turns it into something that is completely unfamiliar to us. Thomas Thwaites’s main point of view throughout the story is how reliant we are on other people, to the point that we don’t know how to use relatively simple technology. “My attempt to make a toaster has shown me just how reliant we all are on everyone else in the world… It also has brought into sharp focus the amount of history, struggle, thought, energy, and material that go into even something as mundane as an electric toaster.” (Thwaites 176). This quote from the story makes me think about how complex our society really is. It made me think about how I don’t have any clue about how simple technology works. Then I took this one step further. Products like computers are so complex, I wouldn’t even know where to start if somebody asked me how one works. Throughout the story, Thomas Thwaites makes Thirdly, I now know about the essay I, Pencil, written from the perspective of a pencil ‘as told to Leonard E. Read’, and I think it’s fantastic! Part of the project consists of finding the places where it's possible to dig up these raw materials. Mining no longer happens in the UK, but the country is dotted with abandoned mines, some having been worked since before the 'UK' existed, but all currently uneconomical.

The most creative innovations are often new combinations of old ideas. Innovative thinkers don’t create, they connect. Furthermore, the most effective way to make progress is usually by making 1 percent improvements to what already works rather than breaking down the whole system and starting over. Iterate, Don’t Originate News about our Dezeen Awards China programme, including entry deadlines and announcements. Plus occasional updates. He later spent several days living among goats in the Alps, using prosthetic goat-like legs and eating grass using an artificial rumen, to explore the life of goats. [6] [7] This resulted in GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016; ISBN 978-1616894054) and an IgNobel Prize. [8] The high concept synopsis of this book is that the author wanted to build a toaster, from scratch. You know, kind of inspired by a line in one of Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s novels where the inability to build a toaster from scratch while stranded on an alien, and primitive, world was meant to insult the intelligence of the stranded person. First impressions aren’t everything. The Toaster Project’s title, cover, and the toaster itself don’t showcase the stories true potential . The Toaster Project was definitely more than an attempt at making a homemade toaster. I would call this adventurous nonfiction a success.

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I have mixed feelings about this book. The concept of a man making a toaster completely from scratch is definitely interesting, and the author is quite entertaining in his writing.

a b Thwaites, Thomas (2011). The Toaster Project. Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 978-1-56898-997-6. So the idea behind the book is fantastic and it is very well written but I felt it fell short of my expectations for a number of reasons. First of all the book seems to have been written by a student who's main aim (understandably) was to finish this project in time for his assignment deadline rather than actually completing what he set out to do. This together with the fact that he appears to be doing this completely un-sponsored and on a student's budget causes him to cut several corners which from the very start of the book show that the answer of whether or not the endeavour is even possible will remain unanswered.We know more now, don’t we? We are more expert than our ancestors, aren’t we? Yet, at the same time, we are also reliant on the knowledge they produced.” In January 2017 he appeared on BBC Radio 4's Museum of Curiosity. His hypothetical donation to the imaginary museum was a history book written in 2222AD, covering the present time. [9] At the end of the book the writer has something that very loosely resembles a toaster - it sort of looks like a toaster but we don't even get to learn if it works or not(!) - as the author says he did not attempt to switch it on in the interest of health and safety. What?!!! Did you actually have me read the whole book wondering if you'll manage to make a working toaster only to tell me that you're not even trying to use the finished product?! Sorry but that's a very serious shortcoming in my view.

Does some basic household stable like a toaster epitome the marvelous technological advancements in simplifying modern day living or is it a little white elephant sitting on our kitchen counter as a daily reminder of the destructive power released upon our planet to meet just one seemingly innocuous need? I read a lot. All non-fiction. Amongst the greatest books I have ever held in my hands, The Toaster Project obtained an outstanding position. It is not just a fun adventure, the author is taking us with. It is profound in its learnings. Cangeloso, Sal. "Nine month project to build a toaster from scratch results in a book, toaster-like monstrosities". Geek. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015 . Retrieved 15 January 2017. Thomas Thwaites is a British designer and writer. He describes himself as "a designer (of a more speculative sort), interested in technology, science, futures research & etc." [1] If you’re wondering what the puddle of goo is lying on the floor beside me, it’s what’s left of my broken brain. Yes, this book mushed my head up like it was making Kool-Aid.

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Modern text books were of no use to the author in trying to extract materials from their raw form as modern textbooks describe the commercial process conceptually, not as an instruction manual. As a consequence, the author had to seek guidance from books hundreds of years old, demonstrating that as time goes on, the more removed we become from how things are made and that our ability as individuals is the same as that from hundreds of years ago “The idea that modern society divorces people from practical ability is not new”. I also love the idea that hundreds of years ago people were still getting to grips with labelling diagrams and so labelled things such as “sleeping dog” and “peasants drinking mead”. The Toaster Project helps us reflect on the costs and perils of our cheap consumer culture and the ridiculousness of churning out millions of toasters and other products at the expense of the environment. If products were designed more efficiently, with fewer parts that are easier to recycle, we would end up with objects that last longer and we would generate less waste altogether. Fairs personally guides readers through the wonders of innovations like a balancing barn, a textile-skinned car, and the first aesthetically pleasing CFL — all of which share an 'I wish I’d thought of that' awe factor" - Sight Unseen He ended up figuring something out, I forget what it was. But I was also appreciative of the chemistry lesson of plastics too. I didn’t realize that at room temperature, most of the stuff of plastics would normally be a gas, but that under pressure the atoms start lining up and bonding with one another, it’s apparently very complicated, and as was explained to the author by one chemist, ‘there’s a reason we weren’t making plastics a thousand years ago: It’s really hard to do.” The contrast in scale between between consumer products we use in the home and the industry that produces them is I think absurd – massive industrial activity devoted to making objects which enable us, the consumer, to toast bread more efficiently. These items betray no trace of their provenance.