The Luxuries of Technology.(Nick Foulkes; TOP Shelf)(cell phones; sound systems; innovations and design)

Byline: Nick Foulkes

I am caught on the horns of an argumentum cornutum, pondering the question, "Can a technology product be a luxury product?" It is the sort of philosophical issue worthy of a 21st-century Aristotle or Socrates. After all, one could argue that almost any product, be it a car or a garden sprinkler, is a technology product by virtue of the inclusion of technology to enable it to carry out its function of transport or irrigation, respectively.

But being that I am not a rigorous -- nor indeed any kind of -- philosopher, I take a technical product to be something electronic, the exact workings of which I would have trouble explaining to my children. I would further add that these days a technology product is often something that is more or less obsolete, or is about to be superseded by a new generation of similar products, typically as soon as one takes possession of it. And it is the rapid onset of obsolescence that prevents my accepting that a technological product can also be a luxury product. It is not an insurmountable barrier but one that I consider important when examining, say, mobile telephones.

Vertu, for instance, has recently introduced a new range of cell phones. For me, a telephone is a functional object. As an esthetic snob I do not want it to look hideous, but appearance is not the first criterion; I want it to enjoy reasonable battery life, reliability, durability and benefit from the most recent advances in communications technology. Although I am not particularly prone to phone envy, I can understand that the newest, sleekest phone can be a fashion item.

But fashion is different from luxury, and therefore a Vertu phone does not appeal to me as a luxury item. That's despite Vertu's claims that its phones are put together with the carefulness of a fine Swiss watch; that they can withstand being driven over by a Hummer, and that they can be finished with leather or precious stones. To my mind, natural hide and gems are materials inappropriate to the exterior of a telephone.

As far as I remember, one of the most dearly held tenets of William Morris, a founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, was that designs must be suitable to the material and vice versa: this is a useful litmus test to apply to any product. I am bewildered why Lenovo should think to offer an IBM ThinkPad covered in leather -- computer companies aren't known for their skills in working with leather, just as leather workers are not the ...