Ugh. This is like a bad homage to Age of Context (kleinbl00). Besides, I think the idea of a future where devices do all the thinking for you is as old as sci-fi. For some reason it always includes the image of coffee being ready when you wake up. As if those two minutes are so dreadful? Anyway, this kind of future hinges on the idea that we are creatures of habit in everything we do; thus, we can always predict and act based on that habit. Once behaviour is completely predictable, removing choice is just the logical extreme. But do the people who write articles like that really don't understand that real life is nothing like this? There was a great article here a while back about technology. Its premise was that technology succeeds when it liberates users. For example, smartphones allow you to do more in more places. Self-driving cars allow me to do other things while driving. And that's the problem I have with this all. Efficiency and freedom go hand in hand - they aren't mutually exclusive. Removing choice, letting objects decide for me only works when a) I don't care about the decision and b) a computer can do it faster/better/cheaper than I can. If I had a 9-to-5 job, I can let Google predict my commute for me. Most of the time I don't care about the commute itself (a) and I'd like to make it faster wherever I can (b). But sometimes I feel like taking a different path, or different mode of transport, or just have a day off, which negates (a). It's not a big deal if I get a commute warning on my phone, but it's a problem when my phone has already ordered a cab when I didn't need one. Same goes for the coffee. Some days I just want something else.“efficiency not freedom” are the mantras of anticipatory design
ZOMG. This article is an excellent example of why I filter Quartz. It's so shitty on so many levels that it reads like a parody. Let's start with the mile high view of The Paradox of Choice that Quartz didn't do: Barry Schwartz wrote a book about something marketers, restauranteurs and manufacturers already knew, namely that a customer prefers choosing between two or three things, not twelve or fifteen. Watch any "restaurant confidential" show and the host always knocks the menu down to a single page. Every gadget manufacturer under the sun knocked their million-product-long alphanumeric product line down to iPad, iPad mini, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6plus. This wasn't new research, it was just a new book: there's a reason you can go on an auto manufacturer's website and "build your prius" with a million options... but most of them are grouped into packages. Then when you actually get to the dealership you'll probably find two or three cars that actually hit the "sweet spot" of what you want. NOTHING in the research that makes up Schwartz's book says "customers don't like to choose." It ALL says "customers don't like to be faced with so many options they no longer feel competent to pick." Follow-up research actually found a direct correlation between the expense of an item, the number of options available and the amount of research a customer wants to do. Sure - three iPhones is fine. Three cars? Yeah, consumers freak out. What they want is a dozen sedans that they can quickly eliminate down to two or three top choices which they then research intensively. Nowhere does it say "I only want one kind of outfit." About that, by the way: Did you see that? That was Quartz bald-facedly refusing to acknowledge that Mark Zuckerberg wants to be mentioned in the same sentence as Steve Jobs... while mentioning him in the same sentence as Steve Jobs. There's "choice" and there's "branding" and if it suited Mark Zuckerberg to be mentioned in the same sentence as Lady Gaga you can rest assured he wouldn't wear gray T-shirts. Finally, coffee. Hoo boy, coffee. Did you see the stock photo they took to go with coffee? They've got it hidden behind HTML5 so i can't link to it, but it's this cup: Remember that cup? Yeah, that one. Only Quartz could write an article about the future of marketing and use as its exemplar the most spectacular failure of marketing of the past 18 months. But hey, at least they got self-driving cars in there. Somehow. For some inexplicable reason. Despite the fact that they're being hailed as a potential mass-transit system that will give users - - wait for it - choice.Like Steve Jobs’ jeans and black turtleneck, Mark Zuckerberg’s gray t-shirt and black hoodie have become a part of the public image of the man.
The cup-writing campaign was criticized by seemingly just about everyone for being utterly tonedeaf, with the social media outcry causing a Starbucks executive to deactivate his Twitter account. In the memo, Schultz insists it "was always just the catalyst for a much broader and longer term conversation" and that "this initiative is far from over." A Starbucks spokesperson tells the Associated Press "the change is not a reaction to that pushback," which seems highly unlikely.
Hopefully this means Starbucks is doing away with their awful plan to display a list of race "conversation starters" by the register, which included bizarre Mad Libs-style statements like "In the past year, I have been to the home of someone of a different race ___ times."
I think it really comes down to control. Manufacturers want a captive audience and they are the main employers of marketers, and all of a sudden the next "trend" is exactly what the financial backer wanted to hear! What are the chances? And, as you pointed out, if consumers didn't want limited choice we would all be driving black Fords just as Henry wanted.
Like all trends, this will be taken too far. Choice should be accessible when needed or requested, but scarce when it's not. I find few things more infuriating than technology that assumes something that I do not intend, especially when the course to correct it significantly complicates the task at hand.
I feel like you are describing what makes the new MacBooks so terrible. One port to rule them all!