[damiante]

I see the same sort of thing happening in housing, and I think it's because the nature of the thing has changed.

Houses used to be for families; they were often quirky or strange or emergent, with weird layouts or materials. They may have garish wallpapers or floor to ceiling wood panelling. But these touches were reflective of the personalities of the owners. They met the needs of the specific people who inhabited them.

Nowadays, as houses are more of a commodity, they must be generic. All flat white interiors, straight corners, no cornicing or archetraves or plasterwork or anything to give the home a unique character. Instead it must be a blank canvas such that any inhabitant can put his own things inside it to make it his.

Computers are the same; what was once a niche product for enthusiasts and businesses has now become an instrumental part of nearly every moment of nearly everyone's lives. Thus they also must be generic and same-y, with limited avenues for superficial customisation, so that they can be interchanged or upgraded without jarring the user against the new version or device.

Personally I prefer radical customisation and quirkiness. I find it charming. But it seems that those who are designing (or perhaps only selling) the things disagree with me.

[kulahan]

Not that I have much of a bone in this fight - I already own a home and don’t plan to ever move (which makes this especially easy for me to say) but generic, identical housing is probably going to be essential moving forward. One of the reasons we haven’t found a way to make home construction faster is because every single project is about as unique as can be.

Not to mention, there are still billions of people needing housing, and with the climate situation we’re already in, building billions of unique homes will make the problem a LOT worse.

Again, I don’t really care much about the issue, but I just think it’s worthwhile to remind people that the American way of life (which developing nations aspire to) is absolutely untenable as far as all modern as currently-feasible technology is concerned. Maybe we could live with not being expressive just on the outside of our houses specifically?

[damiante]

The solution here is to build more higher-density housing options. Tokyo has very affordable real estate because dwellings are appropriately-sized for dense urban lifestyles and are nearly uniformly mixed-use buildings with retail space on ground floors and residence/office above. Combine this with lax zoning and you have a recipe for affordable housing.

Comparing this to my own city of Melbourne, Australia: high-density dwellings are generally constrained to innercity suburbs and are still seen as undesirable compared to free-standing homes or semi-detached houses. Councils restrict the development of new high-density or mixed-use buildings for what amounts to NIMBYism. Inadequate public transport in the growth areas of the Northern and Western suburbs increases dependence on roads and freeways.

There are options to support affordable living in cities that don't involve covering our farmland and wildlife reserves with uniform white plaster cubes.

[bombcar]

Some of the similarities are because of the need to produce at cheapest options.

But much, much more are because people have too much an eye on resale value, and if your house is different from all the rest, you reduce your buyer pool.

It costs nearly nothing to make kitchen cabinet heights comfortable for the main user; almost nobody does this even on full custom builds.

[GlacierFox]

Yeah we need those identical brutalist and easy to build concrete housing estates like on A Clockwork Orange. Or a cookie cutter surrealist hellscape like in Edward Scissor hands. Sounds lovely.

[andyferris]

> so that they can be interchanged or upgraded without jarring the user against the new version or device

I suppose this is a big point. I used to spend hours... days really... setting up a new PC. Partly because it would take ages just to get everything off the various floppy disks and CD-ROMs and installed onto the HDD, but also because everything was quirky.

Nowadays I hew to the default install of Ubuntu (or Windows + WSL2) and replacing my device (or SSD) or upgrading the OS is basically a seemless experience. I have some .bashrc/git config/etc stuff I can grab quickly and then I'm basically good to go.

[nixpulvis]

When we all occupy subcultures the macro culture becomes a shell. The least common denominator wins.

[roywiggins]

Remember when applications had themes? Now you have the choice of Light Mode or Dark Mode.