tools that people care about
“to say this is not to plead for a return to the buggy cart, the steam engine, or the vinyl record. It is to plead for attention – attention to stubbornness, to what will not budge, to the things that people fight for. So it’s to plead for design that takes into account resources that people care about. Such design, we are confident, produces tools that people care about – a kind of tool that seems, despite modern inventiveness, in remarkable short supply. (Take a quick look over the computer applications you have bought, borrowed or downloaded over the past five years and see how many you would actually fight for.)”
The Social Life of Information.
I’d keep my Grandad’s singer sewing machine just to have it around, which I guess would have seemed bizarre when he bought it.
The friend with his walkman mounted in a picture frame is somewhat ununusual. The aesthetics of most electronics are shocking. Apple is the best we seem to have but they only really do one style and it will be interesting to see how it ages.
That’s not to say the quote was just about aesthetics. But where are the things that will last?