How fascinating all these dead, sterile and immaculate modern technological gadgetries, thingamabobbers and gizmos are to us organics. The glossy, reflective Astra glass surface of a brand new, midnight black OLED screen, the commanding gravitas of the monolithic and cutting-edge RTX graphics card, the nonchalantly functional form of my dark charcoal colored Hifiman headphones… Yes, I know they are only inanimate objects, but they seem to be imbued with something sublime that call out to my organic systems and, in turn, animates me to grasp, touch and desire them. Indeed, regarding commodities in a general sense, Wolfgang Haug writes about them as “casting flirtatious glances at the buyers… which they use in courting the human the human objects of affection .” Walter Benjamin similarly describes the commodity as a speaker that whispers to us: “Consume me,” or perhaps, more accurately, they would whisper: “Consume me and I’ll consume you in turn.”
Designers have been tapping into this dance of desire evoked by the almost solemn and absolute gleam of these constructs of silicon and plastic. Many of these vessels of planned obsolescence follow the aesthetics and design philosophy of minimalism, with Apple being one of its most consistent crusaders since the early 00s. Chennuri describes this style as focusing on transparency, simplistic color schemes and a “no-frills aesthetic ”. As a design philosophy it takes into account the fact that the functional, inherent power of the gadgetry speaks for itself, and does not need garish or overly flashy visuals to represent itself. The emphasis is instead set on ‘doing more with less’. The device itself is already beautiful and powerful in regard to its essence, the sparse outer shell beckons you to focus on its true value that resides in its interior, hidden core. This hidden core can of course be accessed by spending a few hundred bucks.
In an Edukits article on minimalism, minimalism is purported as “cutting through the noise and bring clarity to the complexity of modern life” and that graphic designers, interior designers and architects outside the tech sphere have also turned towards minimalism in order to “simplify and streamline their creations” in an increasingly complex world. From a cognitive perspective, this simplification works in a way where less effort is needed, as you ponder what the more essential functional and mechanistic aspects of whatever appliance you are looking to buy are. The author would even profess that as a philosophy of life, minimalism can help us lead more mindful and meaningful lives. Herein lies echoes of Henry David Thoreau’s (also quite succinct and commanding in its simplicity) exclamation: “Simplify, simplify and simplify!”.
But for some reason I feel my cognitive cogs churning out a cacophony of thoughts and associative tensions when I perceive and think about these harmoniously sleek devices and appliances, with their supposedly calming auras and their magnetic simplicity. In this essay, I will need to be, as opposed to minimalism, shamelessly maximalist. My lifelong infatuation with the contemporary paradigm of tech minimalism has not given me the peace of mind that this stylistic cult of reduction and uniformity promised. Thus, in this series of blog posts I will endeavour to answer some burning questions that arise from my fetishist fixation with these lithium-laced totems. What is this aesthetic, technological fetish rooted in, in a societal sense? How did minimalist design become its primary fashion choice? Moreover, how did it get its neural hooks into me and hijack my brain? In the next post I shall explicate on what I mean by techno-fetishism, how it relates to consumerist ideologies, and briefly, my personal relationship with these factory-made obsessions and altars of consumerism.