The meeting starts at 10am, but Laura ducks
in late. Brian sits at the far end of a gigantic
slice of pine-carbon laminate, while Greg’s
overlit face occupies an entire wall. While
Laura and the rest of her colleagues are in the
Peak District office, Greg is providing advice
and “a safe pair of hands” to a sibling
company as they begin dissembling the first of
three regional airports in the Spanish interior.
“What did I miss?” asks Laura, sliding into
an articulated swivel chair.
“They’re offering a second gig at a new
site,” explains Greg. “But it’d take me out of
action through to September.”
“Are you there now? Can we see?”
Greg nods, and his face disappears Slipping
on a visor, Laura is dropped into a Spanish sky
[1]. There’s a brief flush of nausea as the
camera drone traces a lazy arc across the site.
Offering to extend their 20-80 deal on
revenue from recovered materials [2], theVirtual reality is going mainstream
following Facebook’s buyout of Oculus
VR in March. Indeed, the BBC conducted
a trial of a live 360 ̊ video broadcast to
the Oculus Rift headset at this year’s
Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
However, the big challenge is in layering
the digital over the physical. Nottingham
University’s Mixed Reality Laboratory, for
instance, is trying to better integrate
telecommunications and computing into
an ‘augmented reality’.
- Blended reality
‘Cradle-to-cradle’ manufacturing is an
attempt to design things that are waste-
free. In essence, everything produced
and consumed becomes part of a fully
recyclable system. Ford embraced the
idea with its Model U concept 4x4
(pictured), which features compostable
body parts. In the UK, sailor Ellen
MacArthur’s charitable foundation is
working to promote the idea, with the
aim of ‘accelerating the transition to a
regenerative, circular economy’.- Recyclable world
BY JUSTIN PICKARD
Researcher and writer
with an MSc in Science
and Technology Policy