I'm an academic working in Design Research in Brisbane, Australia. I investigate how people use products and systems and tools in their lives.
“It is obvious that the iPhone has fallen from the sky inasmuch as it appears at first sight as a superlative object. We must not forget that an object is the best messenger of a world above that of nature: one can easily see in an object at once a perfection and an absence of origin, a closure and a brilliance, a transformation of life into matter (matter is much more magical than life), and in a word a silence which belongs to the realm of fairy-tales. The iPhone has all the features (or at least the public is unanimous in attributing them to it at first sight) of one of those objects from another universe which have supplied fuel for the neomania of the eighteenth century and that of our own science-fiction: the iPhone is first and foremost a new Nautilus.”
With apologies to Roland Barthes…
On the Twitter Drew Smith suggested [1, 2, 3, 4] that Barthes 1957 piece on the Citroen DS also worked for the iPhone.
Until now, the ultimate in phones belonged rather to the bestiary of power; here it becomes At once more spiritual and more object-like, and despite some concessions to neomania, it is now more homely, more attuned to this sublimation of the utensil which one also finds in the design of contemporary household equipment.
