Science of the Time, formally known as Signs of the Time

Urban Nomads. What are they? Who are they?
Without making this a slapstick horror movie we can say: they are all around us.
Urban Nomads are the hard working, city dwellers who daily weave their own web intertwining work and play on the go. Carrying their laptops and mobile phones through cities, they travel from one hotspot to the next. If a bar does not offer them WIFI, they will probably not drink and dine there. Drink, dine and work, we must say. As long as they are connected, they will work 24/7/365 days a year. With pleasure…

Contributed by Marco Pedroni (Milan, Italy)

‘Mu by Peugeot’ is a car rental service. You can buy ‘mobility points’ and spend them to rent a vehicle, a scooter, a bicycle or an accessory (snow chains, baby car seat, GPS navigator, a car DVD reader and so on). The first step is to create a Mu account on the website http://www.mu.peugeot.it. The Italian site is just one of the many points of entry. Currently they are also available in France, Germany and Spain and are currently expanding to Belgium, Holland, Britain, Austria, Switzerland and Portugal. With a Mu account Mu points can be bought and are usable to enjoy all the available rental services - cars, scooters and bicycles on offer in the ‘Mu by Peugeot’ dealerships.

Exceedingly simple in its design and brilliant in its concept, Time Flex is no more than a shock resistant and waterproof digital watch mounted on an adhesive band that can be stuck on to any surface we may wish, and remain there for as long as we wish. It is so thin that it remains always flush with the surface of our skin or that of any garment we may be wearing and thus will not interfere with any king of activity we would be doing, and for what we would need – or simply want – a watch to keep our time.

Scriba from Ishac Bertran on Vimeo.

Scriba personalizes your hand-writing when it comes to your digital communications, starting with your emails. Subscribe and Scriba will collect the sound and light level data from where you are writing. It then adapts your ‘handwriting’. You can also let Scriba know in what mood you are (tired, happy, bored, angry) and they will adapt your ‘hand’ writing accordingly – making it straighter, neater, curlier etcetera. You can also let your email looks as if you have erased some words or crossed them out. 

With the application Foursquare you can find your friends. You unlock your city and see the hotspots and the places to be. This app has spread across the planet like a wildfire. People find each other and look for new people to meet. Through the application old communities are seen through a new vision. What’s also happening is that a lot of new applications are popping up complementing what Foursquare and applications like it have revolutionized. Assisted Serendipity is such a app. Aimed at singles, or maybe all of us who from time to time have a single moment, it monitors where other single people using the app are located close to where you are and notifies you

Buy a pair of sneakers and get a car for free! Volkswagen offers a very exclusive sneaker, designed with the new 50 VW Polo car in mind. The car’s interior and sneakers match perfectly. The only catch is that the sneakers cost 23.444 euros.

Who said print is dead? Well, everyone, including me. But we’re all wrong. The mainstream magazine business may be dying a slow painful death, but there’s a vibrant selection of niche titles available for those who really care. The folks at Stack understand this, and they also understand that people who are passionate about a topic will actually pay for well-constructed magazines that matter.

Ai Weiwei (Beijing, 1957) is one of China’s earliest and most influential avant-garde artists. The Han (206 BC) and the Tang (618 AD – 907 AD) dynasties cultivated the Chinese art vase. It was their form of a water pitcher. Today Coca Cola is one of the most popular drinks, if not the most recognizable in the world. This Chinese vase with Coca Cola is Ai’s humoristic intertwining of history and modern life. 

Charm Café is a youth focused creative centre located in Zhongshan Bei Lu, the creative street of Hangzhou. They provide a platform for Chinese artists and designers to present and sell their artwork. They also regularly host offline activities to encourage creative thinking amongst Chinese youth. Some of their main activities include the monthly West Lake Idea Mart (DIY Mart) and the weekly Charm Café creativity class and exhibition. Every October and May respectively they also help organize China Hangzhou Cultural & Creative Industry Expo and China International Cartoon and Animation Festival.

Designed by the Zurich-based firm of architects RAAFA, the 2016 Rio Olympic Tower will sit just a few miles off the coast. On the island of Cotonduba it’ll be perfectly visible along most of the Rio seafront and beyond. It will contain an amphitheatre, auditorium, cafeteria, library and even a bungee-jumping platform at the top that will truly turn it into a thing of beauty. Acting as a beacon, a “welcome to Rio” landmark, it will be 100% sustainable and capable of keeping itself and the Olympic Village going. By pumping seawater to the top of the tower it will not only create a truly spectacular cascade effect but also power turbines that will produce energy during the night. An extremely clever combination of solar panels and turbines makes all of this possible. It will be an engineering and architectural masterpiece and a thing of beauty that will add to the natural beauty of the city.

Facial hair became very, very common in the last few years, with almost every male who could grow it sporting some. It all began a few years back with shaped designer stubble, but pretty soon as this look became ubiquitous if not actually compulsory a facial-hair race developed in which male celebs and their followers sought to outdo each other in furriness. The stubble grew and grew, ending with Brad Pitt’s Mad Miner straggly nightmare and David Beckham’s patchy face-carpet. But now, inevitably, the beardy backlash has begun. Brad Pitt recently shaved his off, as had Russell Brand, Robbie Williams, Joaquim Phoenix, Keanu Reeves and Gossip Girl’s Penn Badgley, to name but a few.

On the picture we see a poster located on the floor of the museum shop in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It was put there as a floor mat during one of their modernism exhibitions ‘Cold War Modern’. It reads in four languages; “ You are entering the retail sector… ”. The rest of the text reads like an instruction one is not supposed to ignore. Most people will immediately make the connection with Checkpoint Charlie, but not all. “Checkpoint C” was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Germany and West Germany during the Cold War. It was a symbol between East and West and symbolized power, fear and separation. Upon entering instructions such as these were also visible.

Workspring in Chicago has gone the holistic route with their offering of urban workspace. They are presenting an environment that engages you with the latest technologies and a…