Things to come

We all love our belongings. But how  can we enjoy them without so many drawbacks, asks Chris Baraniuk EVERYBODY has prized possessions. We collect things obsessively and  yet simultaneously worry about the rise of clutter and the global impact of wasted stuff. But can technology offer ways to ease this ambivalent relationship? Extending the lifespan of objects could help us minimise the guilt of wasted devices. When Dutch designer Dave Hakkens’s camera stopped working, he wanted to have it repaired. After all, it was just one part that had worn out – the lens motor. But the manufacturer said it could not be replaced. “Basically, they told me to just get a new camera,” he says. “That’s how it goes with electronics. We buy it and if one small part breaks we just throw away the entire thing.” It inspired Hakkens to develop “Phonebloks” – a cellphone with components that can be easily replaced or removed for repairs. Everything from the screen to the camera and processor was reimagined as an individual module. When an online petition to gauge public interest in the design received support from hundreds of thousands  of web users, Hakkens knew he was on to something. Indeed, phone giant Motorola soon revealed that they had been developing a similar concept. Another way to extend the lifespan  of stuff is to use “self-healing” materials. Polymer coatings, such as that on the rear of LG’s new G Flex cellphone, can gradually repair minor surface scratches. But it isn’t only external nicks that can be put right. Chao Wang and colleagues at Stanford University in California have used self-healing polymers to increase the lifespan of rechargeable batteries. These have silicon anodes, but the silicon gradually degrades each time a battery is recharged. To hold the fragmented silicon together so it maintains electrical contact, and therefore charge, they coated it in a polymer that acts as a self-healing brace. Self-healing materials could one day ensure the longevity of electronics embedded in our clothes and other everyday objects, says Wang. On-demand 3D-printed objects also present a new kind of access to stuff and, like the modular smartphones, hold the promise of being able to get and attach replacement parts at home – extending the lifetimes of products and also cutting the environmental costs of shipping.  Of course, technology is changing our relationship with things in other ways, too. It’s clear that the rise of digital media has caused a significant shift – in some cases making us more selective about the physical objects we bring into our homes. In the era of iTunes it may be surprising to hear that vinyl sales are at their highest for 15 years, according to the latest figures from the British Phonographic Industry. But digital music sales are on the rise too. It seems that the two formats appeal to people precisely because they suit different contexts. You can listen to David Bowie on your iPod while out jogging and spin a record of his later while relaxing at home. When you buy the physical object it is often with the experience of how  you will listen to it in mind. A similar phenomenon is occurring with books. Paperback sales may have slumped, but in 2013 the Association of American Publishers reported that hardback sales were up 10 per cent, double the increase seen in ebook sales. It seems the existence of both formats means that people can more carefully curate which bound books to put on the shelves at home. There are some who believe the digital world offers an opportunity to take things a step further, to move away  from the physical incarnations of stuff entirely. But even proponents of this movement point out that while digital possessions are easier to move around than physical ones, they still eat up  their share of resources and require careful management and organisation. In fact, the same type of preoccupation that people have with physical objects may soon extend to digital collections as well. “For now, hoarding is defined by physical clutter, but of course, it is possible to have chaotic digital files and to spend inordinate amounts of time collecting new items that are then lost in the ‘pile’,” says Gail Steketee, who studies hoarding at Boston University. End of ownership One solution to this problem has already been spied by the music, film and video game industries: content streaming. In 2013 there was a 100 per cent increase in on-demand music streaming in the US. The sales of digital music files, in contrast, fell by 6 per cent. The digital world is also providing opportunities to better manage our  stuff in the physical world, in particular with the continued rise of the “sharing economy”. A report last year by The People Who Share advocacy group found that, thanks to a wide range of online services, 33 million Brits shared food, rides to work or bought and sold secondhand goods. What’s more, cities like Amsterdam have refreshed legislation to encourage services that allow residents to rent out their homes to travellers. Airbnb, the most popular of these, has served more than 9 million people worldwide since it was founded just five years ago. But will sharing our stuff – or even blueprints for 3D printing – erode some of the individual connection that we have with our possessions? Not according to Andy Hudson-Smith at University College London’s Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. He argues that overlaying the physical world with the digital one makes it possible to share an item and feel more emotionally connected to it at the same time. In 2012, he and his team placed QR codes on objects in a branch of the second-hand charity shop Oxfam. When people scanned a code, they received information about the object’s history. Not only did the project, called Shelflife, boost sales in the shop, it also meant that Hudson-Smith was moved to reconsider purchasing a “tacky lucky bear” once he realised that it had been a good luck charm for a girl who passed her school exams. “It was tacky and horrible,” he remembers, “but I actually bought it because it gave me that strong emotional tie and I just couldn’t put it back on the shelf. It now sits on my desk at work as a talking point.” He believes that such technology could be of most immediate benefit to the sharing economy and second-hand goods trade. For Daniel Miller, an anthropologist and expert in material culture at University College London, the digital world is simply making the ties to our objects more explicit. “It was always the case that objects spoke to connectivity, both socially and geographically. We prize them for that,” he says. “The ornaments in our house often reveal, for example, the places we have visited as tourists or they signify people who have close relationships to us.” The difference now is that our connected belongings can be part of a “labour-saving” initiative to record our memories and personal ties for us, so we don’t have to. But while objects with digital memories might make it easier for others to understand what our things mean to us, Miller suspects they will only tell part of the story. “We don’t necessarily accept objects that offer to do emotional work because we benefit from the labour of doing it ourselves,” he says. After all, the stuff we really care about is that with which we have an emotional connection. It’s the immaterial side of decidedly material things which, curiously enough, ends up meaning the most.  ■