The death of objects
The Future Foundation’s James Murphy and Richard Nicholls on how the disappearance of devices and furnishings re-defines human space and re-shapes buying behaviour.
Each fresh wave of smartphone innovation acts as if the consumer will be ever happier with infinity of (even unrequested) features and options put inside a single object, one that is soon to be a thin as a credit card and as malleable as a balloon.
Indeed, smartphone seems a seriously misleading name for a device which can double as a camera, a camcorder, a mirror, a torch, a calendar, a calculator, a radio, a photo album, a roadmap, a Scrabble board…and which can check your vital signs and send medical information to your doctor without the need for a phone call or a letter or a fax.
The age is rich not in the burning of books but rather in the elimination of bookshelves.
If once upon a time, one could parade one’s savoir vivre with walls crammed with scholarly titles and with coffee tables groaning under the weight of Manhattan (A Pictorial History), Great Railway Journeys and the latest Marie Claire – then those days are going. Membership of a Facebook based book club – wherein one can cast one’s opinion in a performative way – is so much more expressive of one’s social capital.
When you can store in the clouds, your personal cultural jukebox becomes an invisible Tardis and your living room gets re-colonised by air. Google’s Nexus Q promises: “There are no downloads, no syncing, no running out of space – just the stuff you love, at home and out loud.”
By the day, millions more consumers are asking: do I really need to own entertainment durables for music and movies any more?
Both more widely and more precisely, what exactly is the stuff you love these days? And how much of it actually needs to be tangible and haptic? Are the aesthetics of spaces thus to be favoured over the aesthetics of objects in the times ahead?
The digital revolution suggests, to a certain degree, yes. Whatever the cause of Kodak’s difficulties, there can hardly be a more dramatic example of a brand once able to generate so many valuable human things – consider the colossal and lifelong nostalgia capital of family albums and picture frames for which the death of objects is such an unpleasantly apt trend.
By 2011, the US Department of Health and Human Services was able to confirm that 25% of all American households did not own a landline telephone (but with at least one member owning a mobile). In the UK, Ofcom (2012) reports that the equivalent figure is 15%.
Why own when you can stream?
Within so much popular culture, it grows ever easier and indeed cheaper to enjoy the instantly streamed experience rather than accumulate the physical means of delivery.
Over the years, Future Foundation has tracked any movement away from the essential 20th century model of consumption: purchase, possession, usage, renewal. This model indeed seems very analogue now in a number of markets.
We can now watch a famous movie, alone or with others, on portable platforms in endlessly liquid locations. Why keep those box set favourites in a living room trunk any more?
The anti-object movement : a little more than fringe
It is a truism of 21st century culture that no guide-to-better-living book or happiness guru is urging fellow citizens to live well by accumulating more possessions, upgrading immediately to all the latest gadgets, maximising personal fun through ownership.
The general message is rather that a lifestyle rooted in what we might call romantic minimalism is optimal. That message is invariably anti-clutter, anti-object-fetishism, anti-competitive-individualism and often pro-sharing and pro-public space.
Invariably too, there is an undertow of ecological sensitivity in such propositions. In addition to the zen-rich benefits of the ultra-simplified life, one can also know that one’s existence is carbon-neutral and that one is not contributing too much to the mountain of pernicious waste in the world.
We can add to this digital narrative a general feeling that waste and excess and duplication are negative virtues these days. Due to suppressed consumer demand across Europe and beyond, many people will simply be keeping their homes and their cars and their furniture for as long as possible before replacing them at the lowest price going.
How can objects fight back to restore their legitimacy?
Through remorseless beautification; quality of touch / texture and sensuality; luxury positioning; sustained price competition; the eBay effect (forward re-saleability).
The future of so many objects must therefore surely lie in an ever richer appeal to the senses. An entirely plausible consequence of our trend is that everyday things get visited by ever more design, craftsmanship, beautification.
Just as a generation ago spectacles went beyond cold functionality and became a fashion item, while vodka bottles became works of art, while humble kitchen corkscrews were glamorously engineered in stainless steel, so this beat finds new energy in so many commercial sectors. Everything has to be beautiful.
For more, please contact:
Richard Nicholls – 020 3008 6103 / [email protected]
I just thought I’d put my view forward on this.
1. Yes, some objects are being bought, displayed and used less. But I think a more overarching trend is that people’s uses of new technologies (that in effect reduces purchase, display and use of some objects) sits alongside people’s uses of other objects. I would like to see empirical evidence from some ethnographic type research. My own research shows that the story is somewhat more complex.
Further, getting rid of objects can entail the ownership of more technologies. Yes, as the author states, many US households do not now own a telephone landline. But if the average household size is, say, 3 (probably a little less), then for every one telephone landline lost, there are around two or three mobile (physical artefact) phones.
Also, yes, people are streaming content. But streaming to what? Computers, laptops, tablets, phones, gaming devices, TVs. In fact, more devices than ever before.
2. People perform status and identity partly through objects. People may be changing some of their relationships with objects, and giving different roles to them. But emphatically, this does not mean the end of objects. Social change is human led. People will let go of objects only if they are able to perform and thereby construct identity, status and so on by other means.
3. Related to this last point is how much things like Facebook can be considered ‘objects’ in terms of the meanings and roles people give to them. People treat FB in a similar way to how they treat some objects (and can be even more difficult to get rid of!) and people relate to it as though it has an object-ified existence. Artefacts do not need to have a material existence.
Just thought I’d get that off my chest:)