Non-Rational Consumerism

First of all, I bought a Macbook too, finally. I’ve been wanting to switch for a while now, but for some rational reasons I didn’t. The strange thing about my purchase is that it’s a pure luxury item for me. I have a good small fast Dell laptop, which I will also continue to use.

As a software engineer and geek I live in an abundance of gadgets and technology. After reading this book by Dan Pink, I’ve started to become aware of the trend of non-rational consumer behaviour.

Why did I want this Macbook? Because I like the product. Like? Yes, attraction, something you can not rationally define. Also, I like how it limits my choice, less worries.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not really attracted to the material object. Infact, I’m rather an anti-materialist. They’re tools that I use and abuse. Karim Rashid, a famous designer, conveys it in a much nicer way: Consume experiences, not things.

In the new age – named wisdom age by some people , conceptual age by Dan Pink – non-rational behaviour will become increasingly important. As a result design, opinion and communication will become more important (the first and latter can be observed in the current Web 2.0 boom too I think).

Also, when I relate this to Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity , this makes sense. If current technological trends continue and nanotechnology will be fully realized, we will live in a world where material is no different than information. With current information-communication trends, the information will be easily available. Wouldn’t this be a world where creativity and human ingenuity is the most important?

This week I discovered that the Sense in Sense and Simplicity can have a deeper meaning for Technology.