Do you remember finding something that seemed to reflect who you are? I am not talking about life altering revelations but smaller connections that satisfy your search to find something that you thought only existed in your mind. In the retail world, finding what you need has not become a question of, “If I can find it,” but rather, “when I find it, which style will I choose.” Even necessities are differentiated by style, covering up their utilitarian function that drove us in search of these very products that we are now pondering whether to get in baby blue or sunburst orange. The drive to define ourselves by what we own has now been pushed to the limits with more malleable styles, customizable to the smallest thread, into what is known as mass customization.
The process of searching for what we want is becoming a thing of the past with the inception of mass customization by manufacturers of every type of consumer good. In fact, customization is everywhere. We can make our own MySpace page on the computer we got custom built for ourselves. If we don’t like our short hair we can get extensions that make us totally unrecognizable. We can now change the features we were born with until we can’t even recognize ourselves—a smaller nose, bigger breasts, and skinnier waste. We now have every tool in defining our individuality.
We can now project our selves onto every aspect of our life that is seen by others. With customization, however, comes the loss of discovery and hunting for the product that was perfect.
If we can customize every product we own they will be able to fit our style and our emotions at every point in our life. Offering a customizable object to a consumer will create a lifelong customer by making it possible to them to get the same reliable product they are used to, but fitting the style that is popular at the time. This will make it possible not only to say, “I need a new _________ because my old one is breaking (or just old)” but “I want a new _________ because I might not feel like using my blue one tomorrow.” We will have multiple versions of exactly the same product. As Virginia Postrel explains in her book, The Substance of Style, “‘Form follows emotion’ has supplanted ‘form follows function.’ Emotion tells you which form you find functional.” “Form follows emotion,” implies that we may choose one version over the other version of the same product because we feel the aesthetics have made it of better use. This sounds ridiculous but maybe it will lift our self-esteem by having products to fit our mood. Then again, maybe it won’t.
In looking at an issue where our individuality is defined, we must look at what defines us as an individual. We can only define ourselves as individuals by addressing society as a whole. In his book Between Man and Man, philosopher Martin Buber, known for his philosophies on relationships and religion, says that, “The individual is a fact of existence in so far as he steps into a living relation with other individuals." The “other individuals” that Buber refers to is a collective human society—something that reveals similarities—because without similarities how can anyone be different? If we strive to all be different we will no longer be straying from the norm of a larger group that defines our difference. Similarly, if we all appear different, it will only make us more aware of our similarities.
Imagine a world in which everybody had a different look. You could not find a single person that got the same color combination of Nike’s you did. We as humans thrive on acceptance, and cliques rely on similarities to pick out who belongs to the group. If we all look different, acceptance will come after long investigation because initial judgments will be hard. Today if we come across another person wearing the same thing as we are, we usually get mad and start evaluating how that person looks in the same thing. The shock of discovering a person with the same thing on is immense even though we fully know the possibility of confronting a person with a similar product. In a world where every product had thousands of combination the chances of meeting a person with the same shoe as you would be one in one hundred million. Now lets say you happened to be that one. Confronting a person with the same product in a world that is designed to eliminate this possibility would be overwhelming.
Turning to discovery of a different kind, let’s look at what will happen to self-expression in a time when everything is customized at the click of a button. Defining ourselves for who we truly are only comes after a life long process of self-discovery. The style that defines us also comes through finding what we want. Clickable customization creates a reliability on what we assume we want. Postrel, in her book, mentions the fact that people love stores. Stores create a vehicle for which we must find the product that we have in our heads. Finding a product that matches the vision in our head creates a sense of accomplishment that is void during instant customizing.
Through the discovery of style comes and understanding of the styles meaning and roots. Styles are often spawned from influence from unrelated subjects. The original meaning of these subjects is often destroyed by those whom it inspires. “As we see more aesthetic possibilities, and feel less pressure to conform to a single ‘correct’ or consistent look, we turn formerly meaningful styles into sources of personal pleasure” (The Substance of style). Because of our own desire, we have the capability to turn something potentially sacred into something kitsch.
The adaptation of something sacred, to a religion or subculture, into something consumer causes great resentment by the initial culture. The transformation of a subculture into pop culture causes backlash from its origins. The exploitation of subcultures for aesthetic pleasure would greatly increase with clickable customization. The knowledge of the subcultures heritage would be reduced to aesthetic value alone.
The emotional ramifications of clickable customization is hard to foresee but should be closely scrutinized as we enter an age of infinite choice. Defining ourselves will be approached in extreme detail and will create styles unlike anybody else. We must however not lose sight of the fact that we are a single society, one in which our differences are played out on a world stage, where extreme individuality could break apart the foundations of our bonds.
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