Description :
One of the favorite pass times of the Japanese is chindogu, “the art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem.”
The Ubi-camera, presented by the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS) is such an invention. It is an ingenious finger camera that lets you compose photos by framing them with your hands. The distance between the face of the photographer and his hands determines the zoom of the photo.
A movement of the thumb presses the shutter. The ideal tool for (would be) film directors?
However, the definition of chindogu given above is only half of it and Wikipedia continues with : “chindogu has a distinctive feature : anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions would find that it causes so many new problems or such significant social embarrassment, that effectively it has no utility whatsoever.”
The Ubi-camera seems to fit perfectly both halves of the definition and hence it must be a chindogu. It could have been an April’s fool joke too if only they didn’t go public two weeks early.
*by andreascy*
