I think we place way too much stock in newness. I wonder if design innovations might be informed greatly by looking further back into history. What’s left of the past gives us simplicity and durability of both ideas and goods. “Those were simpler times,” they say.. and maybe that clarity of thought can really help us out right about now. If we want to look deep into the future, perhaps we should dig deep into the past?

Newness is probably one of the biggest selling points in retail.. second only to coolness. Coolness might be a good thing in some regards, because there is an appreciable relationship between popularity (coolness, in my mind) and quality, but I don’t see a great argument for newer = higher quality. Of course there are always great new things coming around, but old things are so much better filtered in retrospect! What if you walked into the record shop and they had a rack right up front of great classic records? And you have to wander toward the back to find the new stuff, the stuff which hasn’t gained enough respect to come up front yet.

Of course, so much of newness is about adapting the old stuff to the palate of a new generation or culture… and while that’s important because it redistributes the meme nicely among a larger, younger audience, it doesn’t always add quality to the original meme… I might even argue that this kind of cultural “distillation” takes something away from the original form.

So I think it’s vital to recognize and understand the original form.