Dilbert vs. The Aesthetic Imperative
There are two ways to interpret this week's Dilbert strips, which satirize aesthetic-oriented tech design, and probably both of them are right. As always, Scott Adams has a keen eye for corporate foolishness, especially when it involves taking good ideas and making them stupid. As Dilbert tries to suggest to his bosses, today's aesthetic imperative is not a drive to substitute style for function but to add style to function. One of the main causes is that quality as traditionally defined has gotten so high (and price so low) that businesses have to find a new dimension on which to compete. Slapping a pretty shell on a lousy product, or building a beautiful restaurant with lousy service and worse food, won't work.
But the strips also represent the engineer's rebellion against the idea that style has value--or that, on the margin, additional style might have more value than additional function. This objection, which often comes from people who consider themselves on the right of the political spectrum, echoes the left-wing critique that says consumer capitalism is all about deceiving peoople with pretty packaging. In chapter three of The Substance of Style, I look at the legitimate value of aesthetic pleasure, even in functional products, and at one point I argue with this post from Steve Den Beste's blog:
Today an engineer similarly condemns the latest iMac for using behind-the-curve chips and mocks buyers who've "been seduced by the case plastic":
After people get over the oh, cool! and start really looking at this, the only real reason for getting it will be to impress people, just as was the case with the Cube, because what is really innovative about this is the case. And you can't actually get any work done with a fancy case.
Missing the effects of the technological progress he sees as legitimate innovation, the engineer doesn't consider the tradeoffs. For a long time, ever-greater computing power was indeed what people looked for in a new machine. But computers are so capable these days that most customers don't need the absolutely fastest chip. To someone who doesn't plan to tax the machine's processing speed, a beautiful case may be worth more than cutting-edge technology, not just for status ("to impress people") but for personal enjoyment. At a given price, adding style will be more valuable, at least to some people, than adding power. True, you can't get any more work done with a fancy case, but you can enjoy the same work more.
Despite my qualms about its implicit argument, I did enjoy the Dilbert series, particularly yesterday's entry:
For a full archive and lots of other Dilbert stuff, go here. My Reason interview with Scott Adams is here.