Life is not fair.
Love is not fair.
And neither is this table fan.
The Ethical Fan is a new concept by designer Simone Rebaudengo that comes with its own perpetual moral dilemma: it can only cool one person at a time.
As in: it lacks on/off switch, and instead has knobs that allow users to input details about themselves (religion, age, education level and gender) to help inform the fan’s choice. If it can’t reach a decision on its own (via an algorithmic order of operations), the Ethical Fan connects to a crowd-sourcing website, posts the details of the two potential breeze recipients and lets mechanical turks weigh in on who should remain the warmest of them all.
Ethical Things 2:17
Thanks to the Internet, advice like “focus on the thinner person because I do not really like fat people and they should sweat more” from some guy in Nepal can prevail in that scenario.
While the project seems more like an avant garde art project than, you know, a cooling device, Rebaudengo does have a fairly logical example of why he created it: “If a smart coffee machine knows about its user’s heart problems, should it accept giving him a coffee when he requests one?”
You’ll probably never know if you’re sponge-worthy, but at least now you can find out if you’re fan-worthy.
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