A Plant That Dies If You Look At Your Phone

Simone Giertz is a designer and hardware hacker famous for doing hilarious, offbeat projects. (Lots of videos of her builds on YouTube.)

Her latest? A plant inside a bell jar that contains a grow-light. There’s a slot at the bottom of the bell jar, into which she slides her phone. The grow-light only goes on if the phone is in the slot — so, in essence …

… if she doesn’t put her phone down for four hours a day, the plant will die.

As Giertz says at the end of the video:

There's something kind of poetic about it. Like if I'm on my phone, I'm not only taking away from my own life, I'm also taking away from the life of this plant.

This idea has promise. 

Giertz has only made this one-off prototype, but I bet she could bring it to market.

[via Clive Thompson]