The function of industrialization is to turn artisans into ikeasans 😆
An ikeasan is a producer just skilled enough to perform as shadow labor the last bits of construction to bridge the gap between most profitable sale state of an artifact and functional adequacy for human life
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Interestingly turning people into pure consumers is almost never the optimal outcome for a mass producer. You must not satisfy 100% of the customer’s needs or you’ll lose all the leverage gained through efficiencies of scale to inefficiencies of customization and personalization
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Customization = fit to individual context
Personalization = fit to individual preferences
Together C&P needs require as much or more information content to fulfill as the base mass product. You can only go part-C&P with a combinatorial product (Starbucks) or a modular DIY (Ikea)
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I used to think software eating a product = 100% C&P for all. In theory, I thought, machine learning could bring efficiencies of scale to closing the design-input information gap between mass product and full C&P product.
Now I’m not sure ML can close the gap even in theory.
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It's never the goal in the first place. Homogenizing the value chain as broadly as possible is the raison d'etre of mass media in the first place.
Mass producers have co-evolved with mass media to create synchronous mass *desire*.
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In "Democratizing Innovation", Eric von Hippel talks about how pervasive the phenomenon is that products don't actually meet customer needs, estimating that for business products, it's about 60% on average.
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