Hong Kong-based architect Gary Chang showed this grainy picture of a “cageman” house. The structure is a low-cost unit that measures 1-meter by 2-meters where each unit is stacked vertically in a warehouse-like enclosure. There is no privacy as part of the living style of the cagemen, and naturally their belongings are pared down to only the barest of essentials a la reduce. Gary says that the inhabitants prefer living in the cages over regular living units because the spaces have the value of constant social interaction–surprisingly the cost difference to rent a cage versus a small flat is not significant.

Gary scored a bit hit with the design of his suitcase house built near the Great Wall. This building is a single story structure where when you walk in, all you see is a simple floor stretched across the entire building with no walls. The trick is that the floors fold and flip to reveal a kitchen, bath, bedroom and other components in the spirit of hide as developed in the first Law.

Describing his own tiny flat, Gary showed how he creates space on-demand by reconfiguring the elements based upon the time of day. For instance, he has a huge bed, that folds up to make space for his dining area with a kitchen that swings out, and then when finished eating he pops open his work space and then by the evening his projection TV screen unfurls with all other elements stowed away to create a personal theater. At the end of the day, everything vanishes and his bed folds out to continue the active cycling of his immediate living realm. It all looked quite simple to the audience, but by virtue of Gary’s subtle mastery of the art of context.

Walter Bender, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) President of Content, discussed the design details of the so-called “hundred dollar laptop.” In his presentation, Walter described the three tenets of “being human” as: 1) We learn (and teach), 2) We express, and 3) We’re social. The design of the OLPC was created with his three human tenets in mind with its: 1) pedagogy, 2) digital expression capability, and 3) the mesh networking technology that makes it more of a “local” than a “global” machine.

Power consumption was a major design constraint for the OLPC given that it’s intended audience (the Third World) does not have the luxury of a constant and reliable power source. Thus the OLPC was designed to run at 2 Watts versus the 20 Watts of an average laptop through a variety of clever engineering feats. The third Key of power is relevant in this case, and it is clear that advances developed in the OLPC will point computer designs towards much more efficient power management schemes.

For as long as I’ve known Walter, he’s always claimed that the secret of the Web’s success was the way in which web browsers always had access to the source code of each web page through the “View Source” command. Because most of the Web was built in this open source manner, it became easy to replicate the knowledge of the Web with a simple cut and paste. He reasons that without this ease of playing with digital information in such an open manner, the Web would never have caught on. I think Walter’s right. At Ars Electronica, Walter showed off the new key on the keyboard of the OLPC “Src” which is the world’s first “View Source” key.

If Tim Berners-Lee is considered to be the “father” of the Web, I think it’s safe to think of Walter as the “uncle” of the Web for his early role in electronic media. The world is lucky to have Uncle Walter working on the OLPC project.

I’ve just returned from the oldest art technology festival in the world, Ars Electronica, held yearly in Linz, Austria where I invited Paola Antonelli, Jason Kottke, Sam Hecht, Hugh Herr, Eric Yeatman, Olga Goriunova, Gary Chang, and Walter Bender to talk about their perspectives on the subject of simplicity. While moderating the symposium I took a series of notes on each speaker that I will compile here over this coming week. Being bathed in an entire festival themed around simplicity, it only underlined how complex the topic really is.