minimalism, privacy, security, these are all mostly a pursuit of luxury.
ive spent a lot of time on that topic, and tech always comes up just short of producing a truly distinguishing luxury good.
the ones that succeeded became the macbook and iphone, blackberry, early facebook when it was only open to ivy schools, blue check twitter, tidal, early slack, Signal, and some others.
the looming question is, what is luxury? the answer as a positive definition is a kind of alchemical mystery. its failure mode is vulgarity, its imitations are cheap, economics only criticizes it, and its very context specific.
my working model is a triad of desirable, thoughtfulness, and belonging, where you can describe a luxury product on these axis and predict whether it will succeed.
for minimalism, notable challenges are things like the ReMarkable tablets that are high desire and thoughtfulness but lack the integration for belonging.
post-systemd Linux has low belonging vs the bsd communities, and is kind of mid in nerd desire and has too much slop attached to be thoughtful.
when you take an obvious luxury product like the proverbial LP pullover or a Ferrari, they imbue a belonging, where an entry level watch or a lamborghini do not. "class" was always a dumb framework bc its critical instead of constructive.
digital minimalist luxury hasn't really been invented yet in spite of some really good attempts. id argue because they lack something in this triad.
ive spent a lot of time on that topic, and tech always comes up just short of producing a truly distinguishing luxury good.
the ones that succeeded became the macbook and iphone, blackberry, early facebook when it was only open to ivy schools, blue check twitter, tidal, early slack, Signal, and some others.
the looming question is, what is luxury? the answer as a positive definition is a kind of alchemical mystery. its failure mode is vulgarity, its imitations are cheap, economics only criticizes it, and its very context specific.
my working model is a triad of desirable, thoughtfulness, and belonging, where you can describe a luxury product on these axis and predict whether it will succeed.
for minimalism, notable challenges are things like the ReMarkable tablets that are high desire and thoughtfulness but lack the integration for belonging.
post-systemd Linux has low belonging vs the bsd communities, and is kind of mid in nerd desire and has too much slop attached to be thoughtful.
when you take an obvious luxury product like the proverbial LP pullover or a Ferrari, they imbue a belonging, where an entry level watch or a lamborghini do not. "class" was always a dumb framework bc its critical instead of constructive.
digital minimalist luxury hasn't really been invented yet in spite of some really good attempts. id argue because they lack something in this triad.