Companies work so hard at being the first to produce and distribute the newest, coolest, products and we, as consumers, always want to be the first person we know to get these cool new products. And with every new gadget comes the extinction of the one we discarded in order to be on top of the times. Tim Wu mentions in his book, "His thesis is that in the natural course of things, the new only rarely supplements the old; it usually destroys it" (Wu, p. 28). Look what happened to the walkman and the portable CD player. Everything we own and value is just one newer, cooler invention away from being tossed in the garbage.
Gary Hustwit’s documentary “Objectified” is an interesting film about the considerations of industrial designers of American household products. I found the segment on cars particularly interesting, as it deals with several types of movement simultaneously (physical movement through space, movement of designers in creating the hand-shaved wooden model, conceptual movement through time as they are continuously modified to increase sales, the driver’s motions handling the car, and the illusion of movement in the body as, “a reflection of the emotional energy you want to see in it”). Yet Chris Bangle, the former design director at BMW in Munich, stresses the irreversibility of the car’s outward design. He says, “It is quite bothersome to me when I see humanistic elements of a car being strangely handled. For instance, a car has a face... but when you put that face on a car, it's there forever. It's just one expression... the backs of cars have also evolved a face.” In this way, he also reveals the car’s complicated relationship to people. Bangle entertains the futuristic possibility of cars acting as avatars for their owners. They regulate the world’s perception of the driver, while reflecting his/her desired self back onto his/her real, bodied self. He fails to mention the armored skin-like quality of cars, in that they also protect their owner from potentially fatal eventualities arising from their existence and operation. These complex inwardly and outwardly projected relationships seem, to me at least, to be nicely represented by the car’s having two faces - one at each end. The “two-faced” object serves a dual purpose as an object: one utilitarian, the other representative. The car’s doubled relationship to the driver from seemingly binary positions, could be due to its situation in time - stretched between the past’s need for mass produced objects (a need that perpetuated a continuous cycle of production/disposal) and the future’s equally serious need for long-lasting, eco-friendly vehicles. The car is being stretched through time - figuratively and, in some sense, literally as its average lifespan continues to extend - while its physical space remains relatively constant. This culmination imbues it with more aspects through which to replace and provoke human work (Latour); a more diverse reciprocated sentience projected into it by the designers (Scarry); a dynamism revealing inherent shi and connection with the world (Jullien); and the beginning again of Wu’s cycle from a closed system (Ford Motors) to an open one (as the way opens for an innovator to effectively solve the automobile pollution problem).
Inventions and further technology have been shaping our lives for generations and usually each advancement was met with enthusiasm from consumers. Wu’s book, The Master Switch, takes this argument a step further by illustrating how companies (both monopolies and conglomerates) inspire people to purchase and consume new goods. Each year people throw out items due to companies’ planned obsolescence of objects, and companies are eagerly looking for the new “it” item that will make them more and more wealthy. The book describes early inventions such as the telephone, radio, and film industry and how companies banded together to control cost and revenue streams. By being in control of all aspects, companies could control the consumer to an extent. While monopolies are still illegal today, current companies are modeling the same concept to their own business models. A common and widely accepted example is Apple. While Apple is only 1 company, their impact on consumer behavior is extraordinary. Millions of phones have been sold simply because no other phone can compete. While people may think technology is the driving decision factor in consumers buyer behavior, I think it is really the company behavior, as their marketing is telling us how to earn, what to buy, and how to spend our money.
Things are inherently connected with time. The way we understand, use, and desire things are completely dictated by a particular time in the world. As noted, Wu claims, "the natural course of things, the new only rarely supplements the old; it usually destroys it" (Wu, p. 28). Time is what recycles what was the 'it' thing into a different direction, generally because of an enhancement to its features and/ or technology. We desire things at a moment because of what we think it will add to our lives at the present time. However, we know fully well that within a typically short period of time culture and corporate media will implant a new necessity, doing away with what was once considered a must have thing. This is just one facet of how time and material objects have a hugely dependent relationship.
Hustwit’s film, “Objectified”, examines closely the relationship between the designer and their product. We have discussed in class objects lives, and we have pointed out an objects capacity to have relationship to humans and it’s environment. The film focuses specifically on the designer and how their intentions for the product give the object characteristics, function, and affect their relationship to humans in general. When a designer is crafting an object, they have in mind how a person will relate to it- this entails how they will use it, how long they will use it, and how important it will be in their lives. All of these factors are kept in mind while trying to design a desirable product. A particularly interesting interview was with a member of a design team for Apple products. Once prompted to talk about the consciousness of the design, he went on a long tangent about the ideas behind the product and the personality that would ideally be assigned to their things. Apple strives for sleek, subtle shapes. The endless formulating of design is ultimately so that they can create a product that does not look designed. The other designers that were interviewed for the film had similar perspectives of the process of designing and the sentiments that go along with creating a thing. Once things reach the hands of the consumers they already have a history- their object life had already begun.
I thought the book was fascinating in that he points out, not just how process of bringing these objects (information) into the economy is integral to the life of the object (as something to be used by a human, or be an appendage to person), but how there's a specific but subtle "art" or way to create conditions for a vital industry. I think intangible objects (like information) in his scenario, are seemingly given materiality in the very process of exchange (which people tend to see physical objects as always resisting commodification, like appadurai). Like its not possible to watch films without it becoming something that (has costs) is commodified and distributed. but Wu's economic narrative is interesting in that the very structure of exchange can be manipulated (though not totally) and he adds a political dimension that is not included in most contemporary economic analyses. granted i think his account falls short in terms of the relationship of information to the consumers and what's deeply at stake (rather than just control vs freedom of information), but i guess we can't all do everything.
At one point while reading this book, I asked myself, "how precisely does this book fit in with this class?" I then realized immediately that the concepts discussed in this book challenge the very definition of 'thing,' or at least begin to challenge it. Until now, the class has been focusing on material objects of a tangible scope and textural familiarity in terms of human contact and use. However, on Monday with the video Objectified, we began to inquire into the subtler aspects of materiality, one of which being design. In The Master Switch, we do this again, tweezing apart the layers of communication and information technologies in order to visualize the ways in which we interact with them as if they were things, like any other things. Can we touch the internet, for instance? Well, perhaps not. But we are quite visibly able to observe how it functions in our lives and affects our own functionality as if it was any other useful object. The book also discusses the transformation of popular culture from a model subjected to the unpredictability of success and failure to one formed similar to any other business model. A businessman can own media property in the same way he can own land, for example. This leads to all sorts of questions... Are stocks things? Is the internet a thing? Is an email a thing? Is a movie a thing? Is an economic model a thing? I would argue within the framework of this book that today they are indeed things.
Ok i just spend 20 minutes writing the blog post then my computer froze and I lost all of my response!!! so, this one won't be as good. An idea in "The Master Switch" chapter 4 particularly interested me--the fact that cable television and the fact that it targets and created niches has contributed to the splintering or dividing of america. I tend to agree with this because as Wu states there is a big difference between conservatives watching one program at night and sports fans another while in the 1950s the family would sit down and watch cbs evening news or I Love Lucy whether they wanted to or not because there was very limited choice. It is also true that before cable something llike 83% of americans would all watch the same program one night whereas now these numbers are less--due to the sheer number of choices we have now. I think that these niches have deifinetly contributed to and continue to fan the flames (aggressively) this "war" the media has (I think partly) created between liberals and conservtives, different political parties, etc. I mean, these cable news channels as well as network channels such as fox news are highly irritating. Especially the news shows. I also found the section in part 1 about JOhn Reith, head of the BBC in the 20s and 30s. I found his misanthropic quotes to be hilarious as well as the fact that announcers had to wear dinner attire when they did broadcasts! However, then I read more about him online and I discovered his fascist sympathies and I don't find him appealing anymore. I also enjoyed the chapter in section 4 dedicated partly to "Heaven's Gate" because I know this story and enjoy film history/pop culture anecdotes very much.
Both Wu's book and the film Objectified were a little frightening to me. Both illustrate the fact that we seldom have control over our desires and wants, especially when it comes to consumer goods and technological devices. It is usually those behind the making and creation of each object that is responsible for instills that want or desire in us.
Wu chronicles the history of communication and information technology and argues there is a continuous cycle to which each technological medium is subject to. The film, Objectified tries to humanize the production of products while making the claim that they are improving our daily lives.
The overarching theme of the film, for me, was that our interaction with objects has come to define our daily experiences. I was particularly disturbed when one of the designers got so excited about one of his employees coming up the idea to re-create the potato peeler because his wife had arthritis and the peeler was causing her pain. Instead of her husband thinking to help her and peel the potatoes himself, or of avoiding the act of peeling altogether, he thought of a way to capitalize on his new idea, which he claimed to be originating in his inclination to ‘help’ people.
Mass production has crept so far into our way of thinking that we automatically think of how something will benefit us. And in my opinion, this is incredibly problematic. The need for improvement and convenience seems to have over powered all else. If we are continuously thinking of how to improve or enhance, when can we ever live in the present moment? Or be satisfied in the present moment? Or be able to appreciate this moment? The dependence on items and objects outside of ourselves is uncanny. I think the meaning of functionality is too fluid and ‘wants’ too easily become ‘needs.’
I think both Wu’s book and the film demonstrate that these needs are completely manufactured and imply a larger cultural reality of consumerism and materialism that is coming to define our lives.
i also thought's Wu's last point at the very end of the book about how greater choice and access to more information brings the risk of centralization even closer to our society to be very interesting and I'd like to discuss this in class
In the past, we have read work that discussed how power extends beyond people; rather, power is shared systematically among things, people, or as an organization that produces effects or culture. Wu is concerned with the important influence of information industries in relationship to economy, government, and ownership. Information industries are not only commodity but work as systems that range from being closed to open circuits. Information sharing between people is mediated by technologically advance objects like, the wireless telephone, radio, television, motion pictures, whose purposes remain the same while advancing scientifically. Wu notes that these things may change our lives but not a human condition or nature. In examining media historically, Wu finds a repetition of commonalities within the particular life of a technological invention, and the fluctuation of its meaning and ownership. Currently The Internet, as a thing, is like a thing that no body owns but everybody uses, an open network, however, in reference to the past, Wu argues that this will change. Wu is cautious towards the Cycle he describes, and of the social affects when “social ordering - mass production application of objects becomes sinister when applied to people”. He writes, “in an information industry the cost of monopoly must not be measured in dollars alone, but also in its effect on the economy of ideas and images, the restraint of which can ultimately amount to censorship.” Objectified also speaks to a devouring loop of repetition and technological advancement. What I also find interesting is that in terms of design, and the way Wu describes The Cycle, is that the effects are so convincing because they are unperceivable. Designers discuss the production of a good design through trickery and describe the design world itself with an unquestioned elitism for the material.
11 comments:
Companies work so hard at being the first to produce and distribute the newest, coolest, products and we, as consumers, always want to be the first person we know to get these cool new products. And with every new gadget comes the extinction of the one we discarded in order to be on top of the times. Tim Wu mentions in his book, "His thesis is that in the natural course of things, the new only rarely supplements the old; it usually destroys it" (Wu, p. 28). Look what happened to the walkman and the portable CD player. Everything we own and value is just one newer, cooler invention away from being tossed in the garbage.
Gary Hustwit’s documentary “Objectified” is an interesting film about the considerations of industrial designers of American household products. I found the segment on cars particularly interesting, as it deals with several types of movement simultaneously (physical movement through space, movement of designers in creating the hand-shaved wooden model, conceptual movement through time as they are continuously modified to increase sales, the driver’s motions handling the car, and the illusion of movement in the body as, “a reflection of the emotional energy you want to see in it”). Yet Chris Bangle, the former design director at BMW in Munich, stresses the irreversibility of the car’s outward design. He says, “It is quite bothersome to me when I see humanistic elements of a car being strangely handled. For instance, a car has a face... but when you put that face on a car, it's there forever. It's just one expression... the backs of cars have also evolved a face.” In this way, he also reveals the car’s complicated relationship to people. Bangle entertains the futuristic possibility of cars acting as avatars for their owners. They regulate the world’s perception of the driver, while reflecting his/her desired self back onto his/her real, bodied self. He fails to mention the armored skin-like quality of cars, in that they also protect their owner from potentially fatal eventualities arising from their existence and operation. These complex inwardly and outwardly projected relationships seem, to me at least, to be nicely represented by the car’s having two faces - one at each end. The “two-faced” object serves a dual purpose as an object: one utilitarian, the other representative. The car’s doubled relationship to the driver from seemingly binary positions, could be due to its situation in time - stretched between the past’s need for mass produced objects (a need that perpetuated a continuous cycle of production/disposal) and the future’s equally serious need for long-lasting, eco-friendly vehicles. The car is being stretched through time - figuratively and, in some sense, literally as its average lifespan continues to extend - while its physical space remains relatively constant. This culmination imbues it with more aspects through which to replace and provoke human work (Latour); a more diverse reciprocated sentience projected into it by the designers (Scarry); a dynamism revealing inherent shi and connection with the world (Jullien); and the beginning again of Wu’s cycle from a closed system (Ford Motors) to an open one (as the way opens for an innovator to effectively solve the automobile pollution problem).
Inventions and further technology have been shaping our lives for generations and usually each advancement was met with enthusiasm from consumers. Wu’s book, The Master Switch, takes this argument a step further by illustrating how companies (both monopolies and conglomerates) inspire people to purchase and consume new goods. Each year people throw out items due to companies’ planned obsolescence of objects, and companies are eagerly looking for the new “it” item that will make them more and more wealthy.
The book describes early inventions such as the telephone, radio, and film industry and how companies banded together to control cost and revenue streams. By being in control of all aspects, companies could control the consumer to an extent. While monopolies are still illegal today, current companies are modeling the same concept to their own business models. A common and widely accepted example is Apple. While Apple is only 1 company, their impact on consumer behavior is extraordinary. Millions of phones have been sold simply because no other phone can compete. While people may think technology is the driving decision factor in consumers buyer behavior, I think it is really the company behavior, as their marketing is telling us how to earn, what to buy, and how to spend our money.
Things are inherently connected with time. The way we understand, use, and desire things are completely dictated by a particular time in the world. As noted, Wu claims, "the natural course of things, the new only rarely supplements the old; it usually destroys it" (Wu, p. 28). Time is what recycles what was the 'it' thing into a different direction, generally because of an enhancement to its features and/ or technology. We desire things at a moment because of what we think it will add to our lives at the present time. However, we know fully well that within a typically short period of time culture and corporate media will implant a new necessity, doing away with what was once considered a must have thing. This is just one facet of how time and material objects have a hugely dependent relationship.
Hustwit’s film, “Objectified”, examines closely the relationship between the designer and their product. We have discussed in class objects lives, and we have pointed out an objects capacity to have relationship to humans and it’s environment. The film focuses specifically on the designer and how their intentions for the product give the object characteristics, function, and affect their relationship to humans in general. When a designer is crafting an object, they have in mind how a person will relate to it- this entails how they will use it, how long they will use it, and how important it will be in their lives. All of these factors are kept in mind while trying to design a desirable product. A particularly interesting interview was with a member of a design team for Apple products. Once prompted to talk about the consciousness of the design, he went on a long tangent about the ideas behind the product and the personality that would ideally be assigned to their things. Apple strives for sleek, subtle shapes. The endless formulating of design is ultimately so that they can create a product that does not look designed. The other designers that were interviewed for the film had similar perspectives of the process of designing and the sentiments that go along with creating a thing. Once things reach the hands of the consumers they already have a history- their object life had already begun.
I thought the book was fascinating in that he points out, not just how process of bringing these objects (information) into the economy is integral to the life of the object (as something to be used by a human, or be an appendage to person), but how there's a specific but subtle "art" or way to create conditions for a vital industry. I think intangible objects (like information) in his scenario, are seemingly given materiality in the very process of exchange (which people tend to see physical objects as always resisting commodification, like appadurai). Like its not possible to watch films without it becoming something that (has costs) is commodified and distributed. but Wu's economic narrative is interesting in that the very structure of exchange can be manipulated (though not totally) and he adds a political dimension that is not included in most contemporary economic analyses. granted i think his account falls short in terms of the relationship of information to the consumers and what's deeply at stake (rather than just control vs freedom of information), but i guess we can't all do everything.
At one point while reading this book, I asked myself, "how precisely does this book fit in with this class?" I then realized immediately that the concepts discussed in this book challenge the very definition of 'thing,' or at least begin to challenge it. Until now, the class has been focusing on material objects of a tangible scope and textural familiarity in terms of human contact and use. However, on Monday with the video Objectified, we began to inquire into the subtler aspects of materiality, one of which being design.
In The Master Switch, we do this again, tweezing apart the layers of communication and information technologies in order to visualize the ways in which we interact with them as if they were things, like any other things. Can we touch the internet, for instance? Well, perhaps not. But we are quite visibly able to observe how it functions in our lives and affects our own functionality as if it was any other useful object. The book also discusses the transformation of popular culture from a model subjected to the unpredictability of success and failure to one formed similar to any other business model. A businessman can own media property in the same way he can own land, for example.
This leads to all sorts of questions... Are stocks things? Is the internet a thing? Is an email a thing? Is a movie a thing? Is an economic model a thing? I would argue within the framework of this book that today they are indeed things.
Ok i just spend 20 minutes writing the blog post then my computer froze and I lost all of my response!!! so, this one won't be as good.
An idea in "The Master Switch" chapter 4 particularly interested me--the fact that cable television and the fact that it targets and created niches has contributed to the splintering or dividing of america. I tend to agree with this because as Wu states there is a big difference between conservatives watching one program at night and sports fans another while in the 1950s the family would sit down and watch cbs evening news or I Love Lucy whether they wanted to or not because there was very limited choice. It is also true that before cable something llike 83% of americans would all watch the same program one night whereas now these numbers are less--due to the sheer number of choices we have now. I think that these niches have deifinetly contributed to and continue to fan the flames (aggressively) this "war" the media has (I think partly) created between liberals and conservtives, different political parties, etc. I mean, these cable news channels as well as network channels such as fox news are highly irritating. Especially the news shows.
I also found the section in part 1 about JOhn Reith, head of the BBC in the 20s and 30s. I found his misanthropic quotes to be hilarious as well as the fact that announcers had to wear dinner attire when they did broadcasts! However, then I read more about him online and I discovered his fascist sympathies and I don't find him appealing anymore. I also enjoyed the chapter in section 4 dedicated partly to "Heaven's Gate" because I know this story and enjoy film history/pop culture anecdotes very much.
Both Wu's book and the film Objectified were a little frightening to me. Both illustrate the fact that we seldom have control over our desires and wants, especially when it comes to consumer goods and technological devices. It is usually those behind the making and creation of each object that is responsible for instills that want or desire in us.
Wu chronicles the history of communication and information technology and argues there is a continuous cycle to which each technological medium is subject to. The film, Objectified tries to humanize the production of products while making the claim that they are improving our daily lives.
The overarching theme of the film, for me, was that our interaction with objects has come to define our daily experiences. I was particularly disturbed when one of the designers got so excited about one of his employees coming up the idea to re-create the potato peeler because his wife had arthritis and the peeler was causing her pain. Instead of her husband thinking to help her and peel the potatoes himself, or of avoiding the act of peeling altogether, he thought of a way to capitalize on his new idea, which he claimed to be originating in his inclination to ‘help’ people.
Mass production has crept so far into our way of thinking that we automatically think of how something will benefit us. And in my opinion, this is incredibly problematic. The need for improvement and convenience seems to have over powered all else. If we are continuously thinking of how to improve or enhance, when can we ever live in the present moment? Or be satisfied in the present moment? Or be able to appreciate this moment? The dependence on items and objects outside of ourselves is uncanny. I think the meaning of functionality is too fluid and ‘wants’ too easily become ‘needs.’
I think both Wu’s book and the film demonstrate that these needs are completely manufactured and imply a larger cultural reality of consumerism and materialism that is coming to define our lives.
i also thought's Wu's last point at the very end of the book about how greater choice and access to more information brings the risk of centralization even closer to our society to be very interesting and I'd like to discuss this in class
In the past, we have read work that discussed how power extends beyond people; rather, power is shared systematically among things, people, or as an organization that produces effects or culture. Wu is concerned with the important influence of information industries in relationship to economy, government, and ownership. Information industries are not only commodity but work as systems that range from being closed to open circuits. Information sharing between people is mediated by technologically advance objects like, the wireless telephone, radio, television, motion pictures, whose purposes remain the same while advancing scientifically. Wu notes that these things may change our lives but not a human condition or nature. In examining media historically, Wu finds a repetition of commonalities within the particular life of a technological invention, and the fluctuation of its meaning and ownership. Currently The Internet, as a thing, is like a thing that no body owns but everybody uses, an open network, however, in reference to the past, Wu argues that this will change. Wu is cautious towards the Cycle he describes, and of the social affects when “social ordering - mass production application of objects becomes sinister when applied to people”. He writes, “in an information industry the cost of monopoly must not be measured in dollars alone, but also in its effect on the economy of ideas and images, the restraint of which can ultimately amount to censorship.” Objectified also speaks to a devouring loop of repetition and technological advancement. What I also find interesting is that in terms of design, and the way Wu describes The Cycle, is that the effects are so convincing because they are unperceivable. Designers discuss the production of a good design through trickery and describe the design world itself with an unquestioned elitism for the material.
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