The fallacy in your argument is the belief in the average human.
According to your argument, we should all buy the same shirt size, medium. Because that's the size that isn't too big or too small for the most people.
But people are different, and in a human-centered world, our products would be as unique and varied as we are, which is much more varied than you give us credit for.
> They've converged because we think they're nice.
There is no we when it comes to preference. I, and you, and everyone couldn't possibly care less about whether our toothbrush is a color or shape that pleases someone else. It's my toothbrush. The last thing in the world I want is it being used by any other human.
The idea of aggregate human desire does not exist in humans. We each only have our own personal desires, shared by no one. When I walk into Baskin-Robbins, I do not care what flavors of ice cream other people like.
Where aggregate demand exists is in corporations making products. Because they are trying to amortize their design and manufacturing costs across an ever larger number of consumers, they create the notion of average human preference as a target for their designs. But it's important to always remember that average preference is an invention of mass manufacturing.
It's soul-crushing to discredit your own desires simply because it's not cost effective for a company to cater to them.
The clear evidence against your argument is that products across the entire spectrum of human artifice used to be much more varied. I'm fairly certain Homo sapiens has not measurably evolved in the past hundred years or so. We are the same people we used to be, with the same passions and pecadillos.
What has changed is the economic and organizational structure of the groups creating the stuff we use. When you got your shirt for a local tailor who only made stuff for your city, it naturally sold shirts that made sense for your climate. The "average" it was targeting was a much smaller aggregate based on people whose lives are measurably more similar to yours.
But now that everything comes from a handful of transnational mega-corporations, shipping containers means any product can come from anywhere, and mobility means that everyone is from nowhere, products are trying to please all possible humans.
And the result is an alienating wash of forgettable products that tell us at every moment that we use them, "The people who made this only care 0.0000001% about you."
According to your argument, we should all buy the same shirt size, medium. Because that's the size that isn't too big or too small for the most people.
But people are different, and in a human-centered world, our products would be as unique and varied as we are, which is much more varied than you give us credit for.
> They've converged because we think they're nice.
There is no we when it comes to preference. I, and you, and everyone couldn't possibly care less about whether our toothbrush is a color or shape that pleases someone else. It's my toothbrush. The last thing in the world I want is it being used by any other human.
The idea of aggregate human desire does not exist in humans. We each only have our own personal desires, shared by no one. When I walk into Baskin-Robbins, I do not care what flavors of ice cream other people like.
Where aggregate demand exists is in corporations making products. Because they are trying to amortize their design and manufacturing costs across an ever larger number of consumers, they create the notion of average human preference as a target for their designs. But it's important to always remember that average preference is an invention of mass manufacturing.
It's soul-crushing to discredit your own desires simply because it's not cost effective for a company to cater to them.
The clear evidence against your argument is that products across the entire spectrum of human artifice used to be much more varied. I'm fairly certain Homo sapiens has not measurably evolved in the past hundred years or so. We are the same people we used to be, with the same passions and pecadillos.
What has changed is the economic and organizational structure of the groups creating the stuff we use. When you got your shirt for a local tailor who only made stuff for your city, it naturally sold shirts that made sense for your climate. The "average" it was targeting was a much smaller aggregate based on people whose lives are measurably more similar to yours.
But now that everything comes from a handful of transnational mega-corporations, shipping containers means any product can come from anywhere, and mobility means that everyone is from nowhere, products are trying to please all possible humans.
And the result is an alienating wash of forgettable products that tell us at every moment that we use them, "The people who made this only care 0.0000001% about you."