On May 13, 2005, at 11:30 AM, Peter wrote:

> orm is what the 99% of the users who are not engineers will ever see 
> out
> of your equipment. Unless you want to sell to engineers only, you
> probably care a *lot* about form.

Yeah, maybe.  The sad point is that this is an attitude that we, as a 
society,
have CREATED; a sort of self-fullfilling doom, if you will.

There is/was assorted science fiction that attempted to guess what 
would happen
when, through the advance of technology, goods became so cheap to 
manufacture
that anyone could afford "fine" clothes or high technology.  But I 
think now
we've been there an done that, and the answer is 'fashion' and 'constant
upgrades' (not so different from each other!)  Too much of human 
consumption
is about being conspicuously "wealthy" rather than meeting ones needs.
So people wear the $80 designer jeans instead of the $12 costco jeans, 
and
queue up their pre-orders for MacOS Tiger.  And designers end up working
their butts off trying to make their products look cool, so that people
can justify their decisions using better tasting logic than "I spent 
more
than I had to to show people that I *can*."  Not to mentions so that
everyone can TELL you spent more.

Human nature basically sucks.  But I guess I'd rather be here than back
in the days where social pecking order was determined by battle..

BillW

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