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> Real world objects rarely change design because of the costs involved What an astonishing claim. Fashion is too easy, you could maybe wiggle away from cloth

> Real world objects rarely change design because of the costs involved What an astonishing claim. Fashion is too easy, you could maybe wiggle away from clothes not being "objects in the real world" although I assure you the Emperor aside they are exactly that. How about cars?

DoingIsLearning 5y ago
Curiously enough both industries you use in your example (Auto, Fashion) have permanent designers in their payroll which again touches on GP's points. I don't have to learn how to use scissors or paperclips everytime, I use somebody else's stationery. There is a fundamental form to daily objects that does not change or otherwise changes in leap steps often by completely depricating the old object.
- smohare 5y ago
  Do you leave your house? It’s much more difficult to find everyday objects that do not succumb to constant design changes. Bandages, razors, beverages, literally almost any box of foodstuff…
- travisjungroth 5y ago
  I don’t know, this argument seems to be losing validity. Couldn’t it be that industries that need lots of design for some other reason hire designers? That would be cause going the other way. > There is a fundamental form to daily objects that does not change or otherwise changes in leap steps often by completely depricating the old object. And this just doesn’t seem true at all. Should I hold these papers together with paper clips or binder clips? Maybe a staple. How about one of those new air staplers?
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    Taking your example a paper clip and a binder clip both have the same fundamental form you have to separate two parts of the thing that then squeeze the paper together. A stapler is a leap step in binding things, where an interely different fundamental form is used to permanently bind things. An air stapler has a different operating principle (I don't push a staple a pneumatic driver does it for me) but it is not fundamentally different from a regular stapler in how it binds things. Storing this comment on a server is several leap steps forward from archiving a printed document and binding it to other comments in this thread. :)
    - travisjungroth 5y ago
      Then it seems like you’ve just stated a tautology. Things don’t change unless they do.
lkxijlewlf 5y ago
The only thing that changes my jeans is wear and tear. My car pretty much stays the same unless someone takes a swipe at it.
dredmorbius 5y ago
The design of a given artefact in the real world won't change unless specifically acted on. A garment, or an automobile, or a building remains as it was originally designed, modulo wear, until and unless it is altered, modified, or renovated. With digital artefacts, especially SAAS, where each individual use is fetched anew from a server, there's no such material stability. Product lines are subject to revision, though even here, changes seem to follow marketing rather than functional logic. This is especially true when comparing, say, industrial vs. consumer products, particularly those with a common underlying design or base. Examples which come to mind are Hobart vs. KitchenAid mixers (both manufactured by the same company), consumer automobiles vs. the Checker Taxicab. The last production year of Checker, 1982, could have graced a dealer's lot in the late 1940s: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Checker_A-11_Taxicab_1982.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Checker_... Commercial jet airliners have seen at best marginal evolution since the introduction of the 707 in 1958 (and arguably for a decade prior to that). More recent design changes have finally begun to emerge largely thanks to advances in materials technology. Yes, there's been a great deal of change in avionics, flight control systems, overall infrastructure, and powerplants, but the overall design of a sausage on wings with gets slung from wings or fixed to the fuselage has remained fundamentally unchanged, largely due to laws of aerodynamics. Railroad oil tank cars strongly resembling the present-day DOT-111 standard emerged by the late 1860s. It turns out that there are only so many viable arrangements of material for handling bulk liquids on standard-gague rails given car dimensions, curve radius, braking, bogey capacity, and the like. The modern high-tension electric transmission line pylon dates to the early 20th century. It was the failure of what seems to have been an orginally-installed hanger hook which seems to have precipitated the 2018 Camp Fire in California, responsible for destroying the town of Paradise, CA, amongst numerous others. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/hook-on-pge-tower-eyed-as-cause-of-deadly-camp-fire/165757/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/hook-on-pge-tower-eyed... https://blog.thinkreliability.com/case-study-californias-deadliest-wildfire https://blog.thinkreliability.com/case-study-californias-dea... Clothing, particularly in an age of disposable ("fast") fashion does change quickly, yes. But that's through continued iteration and replacement of individual items, not, generally, by the repurposing of existing garments (accessorising and similar modifications excepted). Matter has persistence. Digital does not.

DoingIsLearning 5y ago

Curiously enough both industries you use in your example (Auto, Fashion) have permanent designers in their payroll which again touches on GP's points. I don't have to learn how to use scissors or paperclips everytime, I use somebody else's stationery. There is a fundamental form to daily objects that does not change or otherwise changes in leap steps often by completely depricating the old object.

smohare 5y ago
Do you leave your house? It’s much more difficult to find everyday objects that do not succumb to constant design changes. Bandages, razors, beverages, literally almost any box of foodstuff…
travisjungroth 5y ago
I don’t know, this argument seems to be losing validity. Couldn’t it be that industries that need lots of design for some other reason hire designers? That would be cause going the other way. > There is a fundamental form to daily objects that does not change or otherwise changes in leap steps often by completely depricating the old object. And this just doesn’t seem true at all. Should I hold these papers together with paper clips or binder clips? Maybe a staple. How about one of those new air staplers?
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  Taking your example a paper clip and a binder clip both have the same fundamental form you have to separate two parts of the thing that then squeeze the paper together. A stapler is a leap step in binding things, where an interely different fundamental form is used to permanently bind things. An air stapler has a different operating principle (I don't push a staple a pneumatic driver does it for me) but it is not fundamentally different from a regular stapler in how it binds things. Storing this comment on a server is several leap steps forward from archiving a printed document and binding it to other comments in this thread. :)
  - travisjungroth 5y ago
    Then it seems like you’ve just stated a tautology. Things don’t change unless they do.

lkxijlewlf 5y ago

The only thing that changes my jeans is wear and tear. My car pretty much stays the same unless someone takes a swipe at it.

dredmorbius 5y ago

The design of a given artefact in the real world won't change unless specifically acted on. A garment, or an automobile, or a building remains as it was originally designed, modulo wear, until and unless it is altered, modified, or renovated. With digital artefacts, especially SAAS, where each individual use is fetched anew from a server, there's no such material stability. Product lines are subject to revision, though even here, changes seem to follow marketing rather than functional logic. This is especially true when comparing, say, industrial vs. consumer products, particularly those with a common underlying design or base. Examples which come to mind are Hobart vs. KitchenAid mixers (both manufactured by the same company), consumer automobiles vs. the Checker Taxicab. The last production year of Checker, 1982, could have graced a dealer's lot in the late 1940s: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Checker_A-11_Taxicab_1982.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Checker_... Commercial jet airliners have seen at best marginal evolution since the introduction of the 707 in 1958 (and arguably for a decade prior to that). More recent design changes have finally begun to emerge largely thanks to advances in materials technology. Yes, there's been a great deal of change in avionics, flight control systems, overall infrastructure, and powerplants, but the overall design of a sausage on wings with gets slung from wings or fixed to the fuselage has remained fundamentally unchanged, largely due to laws of aerodynamics. Railroad oil tank cars strongly resembling the present-day DOT-111 standard emerged by the late 1860s. It turns out that there are only so many viable arrangements of material for handling bulk liquids on standard-gague rails given car dimensions, curve radius, braking, bogey capacity, and the like. The modern high-tension electric transmission line pylon dates to the early 20th century. It was the failure of what seems to have been an orginally-installed hanger hook which seems to have precipitated the 2018 Camp Fire in California, responsible for destroying the town of Paradise, CA, amongst numerous others. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/hook-on-pge-tower-eyed-as-cause-of-deadly-camp-fire/165757/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/hook-on-pge-tower-eyed... https://blog.thinkreliability.com/case-study-californias-deadliest-wildfire https://blog.thinkreliability.com/case-study-californias-dea... Clothing, particularly in an age of disposable ("fast") fashion does change quickly, yes. But that's through continued iteration and replacement of individual items, not, generally, by the repurposing of existing garments (accessorising and similar modifications excepted). Matter has persistence. Digital does not.