Call me old fashioned, but there it is. No one would disagree, we all remember when, yet now it's gone. Completely.
I am speaking, of course, of quality. By quality I mean thought, labour, intent, craftsmanship, design...Many of which are the intangible hallmarks of something that might endure. But endurance is not the issue. Perhaps I imagine it, but with the rise of technology it seems to have gotten worse. As if technology - cell phones, PC's, Televisions, by it's nature obsolete, has now made it more acceptable to make everything else to the same disposable standard. Picture frames, shelving, lamps, fashion and housing cheaply churned from sweatshops to be sold at exorbitant markup, then later discounted at thrift and dollar stores before making it's way to the landfill. Often the entire product lifestyle is under a year.
When things so lose their value, so often do people. The homogenized lives of factory suburbs and designer accessories is creating a new sort of person. One with the same qualities as we find in their cherished shops, disposable people who identify themselves with brands and lifestyles. There are no values. They've accepted the disposablity of technology, and so it becomes easier to accept the disposability of their car, their fridge, the furnace, the coat, their husband or child, many of which have arguably seen no tangible improvements in design or technology in 50 years. "But it's cheaper to replace it than to fix it..." is often the line, and it is, we encourage this, cheap goods made to be used X times and then thrown away....
Entire generations will grow up without the knowledge of quality. Or of only brief encounters, the ipod touch, quality, yes, but made to be replaced in a year. And this brief flirtation breeds a certain promiscuousness, a cavalier disregard for many of the principles I hold dear.
Call me old fashioned.