Analog + Digital Communication Shoved Together Into a Box

You know the elderly or technophobic relative who just can’t seem to get used to reading things that aren’t in the form of hard copy? They probably wouldn’t get into Facebook in the first place, but this clever gadget may help bridge the gap between digital and analog communications. It’s the Facebook Box, designed by Steve Murray, a Product Design student at the University of Dundee in Scotland.

Murray’s invention prints out every single entry on a Facebook user’s news feed and lets that user file them away into pre-determined partitions. Murray suggests “Friends,” “Family,” and “Frapes” (joke statuses left by other people when a user accidentally stays logged into Facebook on a shared computer).  Other users might find it more helpful to use different filing systems such as “TMI,” “Cries for Attention,” “No One Cares About What Your Baby Did Today,” and “Updates From The Best Website Ever.”

The Facebook Box is very retro in its own interesting way: rather than logging in to check your news feed all day, you simply open up the box and tear off sheet after sheet of updates. The statuses print on the same type of paper used to print receipts, so once you use up the entire roll you can easily replace it and keep on keeping up with all of your “friends.”

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See more in Unbuilt Concepts or under Technology. May, 2011.