Thursday, March 09, 2006

Fried green tom-hey-toes

A couple of weeks back, they broadcasted a reportage on the news about using laser to mark tomatoes instead of the usual paper stickers. Days later, all supermarkets had those tattooed evil tomatos. The idea doesn't sound bad at all... reality is that they rotten much faster than normal.

There are always 3 items on our fridge: tomatoes, cheese and coca-cola. We have never had to throw away rotten tomatoes before. My question is: "have they done any tests before deciding to tatoo all existing tomatos?" Seems that they didn't. And that, is a very important step of the whole "immaterial design process", or any other other design process for that matter. It was a mistake to release a technology without looking at the consequences.

And the moral is: just because a technology is available, it doesn't mean that you have to use it for everything. Just because it "looks cool" (and it's cheaper) to have tatooed tomatos, it doesn't mean that they can justify selling them for 5NZD a kg, when they rotten faster than normal (see picture and/or these posters). I guess it's just a matter of time before they call the whole thing off and we go back to the "unknown calories per paper sticker". Meanwhile, you can play this fun games from "tomatos are evil".

Maybe, one day we're all going to become TomAhToes, and get a laser barcode tattooed I.D. for traveling overseas... it's probably cheaper ("chipper") than the RFID implant like the Chipsons. And it would certainly be more effective than the census forms! Maybe they will give us the option to chose an alternative design to desguise it, or you can get the typical "mom tattoo"... or is it "big brother"? Anyway, Maori are supposedely the inventors of tattoo. It's called "Ta Moko" but for them it's not an ornament. Anyway, back to the laser tattoos; You can also use laser to put a tattoo on your powerbook... Check it out!

Speaking of superficiality, I hope you like the new look of my blog. I always wanted to match the look with the rest of my site, but never had the time. Now that I am learning CSS to design the website for specialkiwis, I used my blog as experiment.

ciao
Bookmark and Share

6 Comments:

Blogger Fernando Vallejo said...

Well, yes... Remuera is just the city district.

During the time I was in Mexico it was a bit weird.

Or do you mean, I should get rid of the profile content? Does that sound too fancy?

When are the packages comming??? We bought some corn tortillas fresh from Australia, so we need those salsas! He, he.

ciao

6:05 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hi
are you mexicano?
i just say hello.
wath are youre doing tan lejos.

saludos

9:27 am  
Blogger Fernando Vallejo said...

WOW! I didn't notice... you know I am a bit dislexic...(true) I sometimes write "s" instead of "d".

My profile is a CSS tag "bloguserprofile" but, let me check if I misspelled my profile.

See ya tomorrow.

--
Hi Populo,

Si, soy mexicano pero viviendo en NZ desde hace tiempo.

Saludos

3:16 pm  
Blogger Fernando Vallejo said...

UPDATE

Sandra tells me, that in fact they are retiring the tattooed tomatos from all supermarkets and they have paper stickers again.

Told ya.

ciao

12:21 pm  
Blogger Roolhaas said...

Maybe you could stuff a tattooed tomatoe and show it in a museum next to an extinct Dodo...

2:47 pm  
Blogger Fernando Vallejo said...

Well, Sandra tells me that the tattoed evil tomatoes refuse to get extinct... they had a "come back" to the supermarket shelves!

Maybe they improved the laser, so that they don't get (so) damaged. Who knows.

When are the boxes comming???

ciao.

11:00 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home