AMONG THE artists, designers and scientists sharing their big ideas at the TedX Dublin event was Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh, the Irish inventor of Sugru, which has been described as “the best invention since sellotape”.
“Can any of us be fixers?” said Ní Dhulchaointigh, creator of the hand-mouldable air-curing rubber that can be used on most surfaces.
Anyone who has repaired something will tell you the amazing experience it is to have a “successful fix”, she told the audience at the event that saw 15 speakers offer their ideas under the Dublin a City of Ideas banner.
She asked whether gadgets were shaping the way people used them, rather than the other way around. “If a tool is not working for you, make it work,” she said.
She told of one Sugru user whose three-year-old child liked to take photographs. Cameras designed for children were not very good so he used Sugru to protect an adult camera and to give it hands so the child could hold it.
“In doing what he did, he took full ownership” of the camera and how he and his child behaved around it. She urged everyone to “fix one thing” and become more “free” with their “stuff”.
