The second half of this decade has ushered in valiant experiments in consumption. There’s living off six pieces of clothing for a month. Swearing to buy nothing for a year. A year-long diet of locally-grown food.

All well-warranted insinuations that buying stuff is something to avoid, at almost all cost.

Even if we remind ourselves that we’re increasingly defining ourselves more through experiences than the things we own, it’s hard to ignore the fact that as a nation, we’re hardcore shoppers. According to the sobering online film "The Story of Stuff," we spend three to four times as many hours shopping than our European counterparts, with only about 1 percent of what is bought staying on our hands for more than six months.

Reconsidering “More is More”

After WWII, product designers were directed to create things that would stop working in the name of economic expansion. This sort of “planned obsolescence” had consumers going back to buy the same, or similar, products over and over. Even now, things like print cartridges, fast fashion and MP3 players are designed to have relatively short functional lives.

Bruce Sterling, “visionary in residence” at Art Center College of Design and founder of the Viridian Design Movement (precursor to the website Worldchanging) suggests in his Last Viridian Design Lecture that our obsession with stuff has deep socioeconomic roots, but that we may have turned the corner to a new age:

“In earlier, less technically advanced eras…material goods were inherently difficult to produce, find, and ship…They were closely associated with social prestige. Without important material signifiers such as wedding china, family silver, portraits, a coach-house, a trousseau and so forth, you were advertising your lack of substance to your neighbors…So it made pragmatic sense to cling to heirlooms, renew all major purchases promptly, and visibly keep up with the Joneses.

That era is dying. It’s not only dying, but the assumptions behind that form of material culture are very dangerous. These objects can no longer protect you from want, from humiliation — in fact they are causes of humiliation, as anyone with a McMansion crammed with Chinese-made goods and an unsellable SUV has now learned at great cost.”

Designing for Deeper Meaning

The resurgence of craft and artisanship is surely one expression of this new era. There seems to be considerable thirst for more meaningful or satisfying relationships with objects generally. The meteoric success of most anything Apple seems to be just one proof point.