house: electronics-aware furniture part 2

Great minds think alike! Four days after I wrote about this issue and the Wiretracks iCove and Rotalia Multipot approaches, I saw an ad for the Anthro eNook in Wired magazine. The eNook is a more comprehensive solution than those two:

• shelving - OK!
  
• hidden space and power for those ^%$#@! wall-wart power supplies - OK!
• cable management - OK!

Rather than acting as a new-millenium bedside table/kitchen table/hallway stand, the Anthro eNook is a brand-new piece of furniture: a wall-mounted flip-down surface with shallow shelving. It's missing thin drawers for all the fiddly bits (though the additional shelves sort of work for this), and it doesn't have any specific support for Ethernet or USB cabling. But it addresses a lot of issues for just US$460 with three shelves.

The problem I see is you'll leave the Anthro eNook's surface flipped down most of the time, otherwise your personal gadgets are inaccessible. So you don't just need wall space, you have about 23 inches poking out. Hence my preference for a table or stand. But the eNook could work well as a desk surface for using your notebook computer if you never plug in an external monitor. Anthro has the same idea, their Macromedia Flash movie shows a stool in front of one eNook, and even a happy medical worker standing in front of one.

How soon before businesses realize they can replace 7-foot square cubicles with 3-foot square booths containing eNooks? Office space will truly become Douglas Coupland's veal-fattening pens, with no room to sit down or turn around.

Categories: house, electronics, furniture, PDA, design, desk