Jargon Watch: Curb mining
Marketing agency Blu Dot teamed up with furniture designer Mono to start a word-of-mouth campaign through a ‘Real Good‘ experiment. They placed chairs around New York city, tracked them to their new homes when they were picked up and interviewed the new owners. This was to investigate the concept of curb mining (kerb mining in UK English) – where people salvage other people’s stuff that has been left on the street.
Andy Jordan in his Tech Diary podcast for The Wall Street Journal interviewed one of the curb miners featured in the experiment who pointed out that the bulk of curb mining paydirt was from past-over technology like fully functional printers.