If you live in the Chicago area, you’ve probably heard that there is a new Apple store. For some people, that means waiting outside, in line, to get inside of a store that for me personally, makes me anxious and sets off all types of anxiety. (I’m there only to repair or buy, two things I loathe) For others, they can’t wait to open their wallets to buy the most recent, shiny object dangling in front of them.
The first store opened in 2003, and now not so many years later, it sits abandoned, having moved a few blocks, not so far away. I can’t help thinking this is some sort of metaphor for the things they sell. How cutting edge and exciting it was when it first opened, it has a short life span, to be easily discarded when the newest, best, more expensive item comes along. The space walking by looking like any other abandoned store front with graffiti. As time goes on, the items become nothing more than garbage, as worthless as yesterday’s newspapers.
I write this as part of an open discussion about what we hold valuable. What we save. Keep. Preserve. I look at the Kickstarter campaign being done by the Chicago Design Museum where they ask “what is worth preserving?” I know as time goes on, it won’t be these phones.