Politics of Power

Power strips don't have opinions — or do they? Politics of Power embeds ideological bias into the most mundane of domestic objects.

Each socket in the strip is governed by a different political philosophy. Whether your device gets power depends on which socket it's plugged into — and the system that controls it. Some are egalitarian, distributing power equally. Others favour the first connected, the last, or the most recently active. One charges devices based on how much they've already charged.

Three prototypes — Model D, Model M, and Model T — each make visible a different set of assumptions about fairness, hierarchy, and priority. Products are never neutral. They always carry the beliefs of the people who made them. This project just makes that explicit.

Developed with Matthieu Cherubini and Saurabh Datta at automato.farm. Featured in Creative Applications and FastCo Design. FastCo Innovation by Design honorable mention.