Public spaces are now populated by zombies staring at their phones or locked away in a private world of audio. Together with the iPhone, these white earbuds (owned by three out of four American teenagers) have surely secured Apple the title of history’s most anti-social product designers. And so the social pressures that live in these devices, the demands of work and the pull of the online crowd, have overrun both private and public life.Īirpods are another step in this conquest: a piece of tech discreet enough to allow media consumption wherever we may be. The ultimate example is of course Apple’s own smartphones, laptops and tablets, whose subtle forms and neatly organised contents are tempting to use in any situation. It has provided aesthetic cover for a gamified capitalist ethic – produce, consume, compete – to penetrate ever deeper into our lives. In this way, minimalism has led us to mistake efficiency for beauty. Across the board, corporate giants have stripped their logos of detail, from Burger King to Warner Bros, Burberry to Google. The same principle operates in the digital world, where graphic design is streamlined into easily digestible blobs of colour and bold lettering, lubricating the endless flow of media. Even sex toys look like Apple products now.ĭomestic life is more and more a dance with machines, which listen to our conversations and monitor our sleep. Sleek devices pile up in the aspirational home, never quite amounting to clutter: KitchenAid juicers and Nespresso coffee machines, Alexas and Google Assistants, smart speakers and smart alarm clocks.
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