"A more prosperous but less costly lifestyle"

It sounds like a dream come true, but that is the natural result from the trend of moving "our society from an 'accumulation nation' of hoarders into one where our possessions can be constantly replaced with newer, better items" according to Daniel Nissanoff - the author of FutureShop.
How exactly does this happen? Trendwatching.com gives the answer: the growing trend of more and more companies selling and/or borrowing their goods to the customers results in a lot of goods becoming second hand, "which brings us to eBay and the many other auction and classifieds sites now matching supply and demand for used goods".
You can read more about this interesting theory at the author's auction culture blog which uses a citation from Penguin advertising his book as a way to learn "How the New Auction Culture Will Revolutionize the Way We Buy, Sell and Get the Things We REALLY Want" . Or, as TIME has paraphrased it, "how eBay allows us to get more from what we want, when we want it".
So - is this about a qualitative growth or just a good advertising campain?
I see here again the same pure consumerism, just a different style of ownership.

What I like better is the description of Trendwatching.com about the way society is changing from society of consumers to one of TRANSUMERS desicribed as
"consumers driven by experiences instead of the ‘fixed’, by entertainment, by discovery, by fighting boredom, who increasingly live a transient lifestyle, freeing themselves from the hassles of permanent ownership and possessions. The fixed is replaced by an obsession with the here and now, an ever-shorter satisfaction span, and a lust to collect as many experiences and stories as possible.* Hey, the past is, well, over, and the future is uncertain, so all that remains is the present, living for the 'now'. "
Does this trend speak about the uncertainty of our time, or it shows a certain degree of maturity and qualitative growth?
Since it is clear now that it is mostly the design of a product that sells it, I hope that slowly but steadily we, as designers, are helping about this growth... even though we have to admit that we live in a material world I do agree that the more people have access to good design, the more successfully we achieve this.



Categories: trends, society