Tag: rob-walker
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The Demand for Product Obsolescence
Years ago (and still, for certain products) consumers decried the idea of planned product obsolescence in industrial design: the intentional engineering of products to have a limited useful life, such as with products produced with sealed-in batteries or fridges that will only function for seven years. In recent years, however, the need for planned obsolescence…
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The Transformative Power of a Narrative
Can a narrative attached to an everyday object increase its objective value? That was the question posed by Rob Walker (author of The New York Times‘ Consumed column) and Joshua Glenn (author of Taking Things Seriously) when they started the Significant Objects Project—an experiment designed to test whether a series of stories created about an object…