Brik Case

I want my MacBook pristine, that cold aluminum glow, untouched by the world. And then I see someone’s laptop covered in stickers—band names, place pins, the actual evidence of living—and I want that instead. But stickers happen by accident, accumulating over time without plan. You end up with something haphazard that might’ve been cool once.

Jolt, out of San Francisco, made something nobody asked for. A MacBook case with LEGO studs molded into it so you can click bricks directly onto your thousand-dollar computer. They asked for $30,000 on Kickstarter and got it. The idea is you turn a status symbol into a toy, turn a precious object into something you actually modify.

Which is absurd and maybe perfect. You’re paying for industrial design so you can snap colorful plastic onto it. Your laptop gets heavier, bulkier, less of what you bought it for. But also, the thing stops being precious. It becomes a platform for whatever you want to build. A Death Star. A color grid. Whatever. You own it enough to change it.

I don’t know if it actually works, if the bricks stay put, if anyone keeps the case on after the novelty wears. But that’s not the question. The question is whether you want your expensive thing to be a product or a tool for your own design. I still don’t know which I am.