I don't think the Brand Age is as bleak as this essay suggests.
Branding is not inherently unproductive, nor is it guaranteed to produce worse watches. They may be larger and less accurate, but consumers still (evidently) find value in the brand. A Grand Seiko or a Nomos or a Patek is perhaps now even more interesting & identity-productive than a watch was in the 60s.
As technologists I think we're prone to dismissing improvements that aren't engineering-backed. But all life is storytelling, and labeling that work as "button-pushing" is… dismissive, to say the least.
What I got from the essay: "brand is the only way to beat competition when you can't significantly beat them on quality". It's basically the market suffering from success. You can buy a cheap quality watch today.
For some product types there is no better alternative, like ISPs. But I'd argue this is because of monopoly, which is different from brand. Most monopolies (like ISPs) usually have negative brands, and there's no alternative not because one can't create a better brand (that's easy), but because the upfront cost to become profitable is too high.
So the cutting edge things are happening in places where brand doesn’t matter. I could think of better examples but moldbot/clawdworld comes to mind. Or ASML, or national lab physics, or cheap attack drones, or.. idk can anyone think of better examples?
And “brand age” (as a broad moniker) is another way of saying innovation has stagnated.
OpenClaw is an exception to your list. It’s easy to spin up an OpenClaw alternative (you can even fork it), but not clear how to significantly improve its function. You may argue that name recognition (what OpenClaw relies on today) is separate from brand; but if a competitor becomes popular (perhaps by offering slightly better security), unless OpenClaw can make a significant functional improvement (like better OpenAI integration, since OpenAI hired its creator), the only way I can imagine it regaining market is via brand.
innovation has stagnated because businesses have driven us to stagnation. Very few businesses provide any real value - the ones that do are running circles around everyone else - given the lack of ability, businesses turns to other, less useful methods of prying our money away from us and largely succeed because consumers are gullible and malleable.
apologies if my comment came off this way, it was not intended. I think all consumers (myself included!) are vulnerable to being swayed by commercial propaganda
I took pg's point to mean that just because consumers see value in the purchase, that is not the same thing as the purchase being valuable - the race changed from 'provide the best function/value for the thing' to 'provide the most differentiated value to the consumer as an identity' and that is, for the most part, less useful.
Defining your identity to other humans is incredibly useful. It's one of the essential tasks a human faces, and it makes all other tasks easier if done effectively.
I suppose my question with it is will our identity be associated with brands who can/do spend billions and billions of dollars on advertisements or a brand of more authenticity.
Do we as humans feel more at ease with our identity/purchases buying a brand which is known by other people because it spends billions on it/ or a niche brand/smaller shop which is more authentic but people don't know about it.
To me, it feels like the david vs goliath story. My intuition says a mix of small but not too small / something which has history that you compromise on like support/quality of product etc. and sometimes price efficacy.
It's true that consumer choice is what defines the market. So really, yours is a cultural question. What do we as a society value? If it's brand identity, like today, then we will get branded products with as little purpose as possible. If we value authenticity, then brands will start building more authentic products. There's obviously a delay between what we value and what they offer, but its clear that building what customers want always yields a place in the market.
Yeah, I agree. This sentiment is weird to me. As a counterpoint, look at Ben and Jerry's ice cream from the 1990s. It was such a cool brand back in the day, and made delicious high-fat ice cream. (I know, I know: They sold out. But I am talking about before the sell-out.) Also, look at Chobani Yogurt in this generation. Amazing product and stellar brand.
By the way, how much more do we need a watch to do? Do we really need notifications, messages, phone calls, cameras, bluetooth, snapchat, remote control, heart rate monitoring and more in our wristwatches? I'm quite satisfied with just seeing the time on my arm. Anything else I can do with my phone or laptop. Even seeing the time is kinda redundant, as I could just check my phone.
> Do we really need notifications, messages, phone calls, cameras, bluetooth, snapchat, remote control, heart rate monitoring and more in our wristwatches?
(Pro tip: Try not using your experience and desires as a guide/requirement for the larger populace - you'll feel a lot better about the world and yourself when you get the hang of it.)
> Anything else I can do with my phone or laptop.
The heart rate monitoring? Not nearly as accurate using a phone camera as a wrist-mounted multi-LED watch. Also I tend not to have my finger over my phone camera with a heartrate app running 24/7 - I find it gets in the way of actually using my phone for other stuff.
So as someone who is cantering through middle age to a point in life close to where males in my family in older generations have experienced atrial fibrillation and other heart problems, having a heart rate monitor built into my watch that is capable of spotting early signs of this stuff is pretty cool. Having it (crudely) monitor blood oxygen lets me know that for all I snore, I don't seem to have terrible sleep apnea, and I'm considering an upgrade to one that does blood pressure too.
I know this is going to be of limited interest to the young, but these devices becoming more widespread is likely very helpful to an older cohort like myself (I'm 47), making them 'just part of the package' with smart watches puts this sort of health monitoring and information in reach for a lot of people who would otherwise probably not be interested in wearing an ugly medical device, and whose first sign of trouble might be a fibrillation episode or falling asleep at the wheel.
> I'm considering an upgrade to one that does blood pressure too.
I've got the Aktiia/Hilo band and I'd recommend it if you're wanting to keep vague[0] track of your 24/7[0] blood pressure. Needs calibrating every couple of weeks against the band but that's not an onerous procedure[1][2].
(Probably worth getting a cheapo monitor as a secondary check though - I've got a Renpho bluetooth one.)
[0] It only really takes measurements when you're not "moving" and that can be "running around", "jumping up and down", "typing furiously", etc. which does lead to gaps and only 3-4 measurements every 2 hour slot. Also their app is a bit rubbish and they don't have a decent export story - if you want more than their "daily average → Health", you need BPExtract to OCR the monthly PDF reports (which you have to request by hand, BTW!)
[1] Protip! DO NOT drop the band onto its on/off switch because it's fragile and will BORKEN itself. Mine got stuck in the on position but I've subverted the problem by sticking a magnetic MicroUSB end into the charging point[3] - applying power kicks it into charging mode and removing it leaves it in "ready to use" mode for 5-10 minutes which is more than enough for standard calibrations and testing.
[2] Although their new "BP via the camera and finger" doesn't work AT ALL for me. Almost never gets a reading.
[3] Which I've started doing for all MicroUSB devices because I've somehow managed to snap off 3 MicroUSB ports internally. Shoddy workmanship.
So I have an old fashioned "Salter" inflatable BP cuff unit that takes a few AA batteries, that I take readings on sporadically, and as I am borderline problematic (the diastolic number is usually a little high, systolic is not amazing but could be worse, no meds currently) I'm kinda/sorta looking at something that can keep track a bit more often and less intrusively.
But I was hoping that would be an updated Apple watch, as I have an 8 at the moment that does the other stuff :)
That said I understand that the BP measurements on smart watches are pretty execrable. Thanks for the info!
> But I was hoping that would be an updated Apple watch
Yeah, I think that might come in the future but it's probably a patent minefield[0]. That said I think Ringconn mentioned that they were looking at implementing it for their smart rings in the "near future" - who knows?
[0] There's also the "calibration against the smart cuff" step which I'm guessing any solution would need and that's probably a whole other FDA/patent minefield. Also tricky to have to sell a watch model with a required cuff and have to disable the BP functionality on watches that don't have a matched cuff. You can imagine the HN headlines...
I used to use smart watch. Then I got a cheap old school one ... and concluded I do not want smart watch again, ever. There is something liberating about putting a watch on your hand, not having to charge it every other day, seeing the time whenever I look at it (no matter what light conditions or which gesture I just made).
I do not want notifications buzzing on hand either. That is what the phone is for. I have a phone too, really, it is always next to me.
> A Grand Seiko or a Nomos or a Patek is perhaps now even more interesting & identity-productive than a watch was in the 60s.
I have no idea what these brands sell and I give it so much importance I won't even bother make a search.
To my mind, this is a lose lose game. Society at large is being engaged into wasteful goals, and as all means are going to be useful in the game where all that matter is displaying more personal material whealths, general social outcomes are undermined: first bribery, then use of other mental coercion tools, then threats, then bare physical aggressions.
>As technologists I think we're prone to dismissing improvements that aren't engineering-backed.
No that's not about technology and engineering blindness. Technologies of course can serve best interests of general public and humanity at large. Or a improve efficiency of genocide. And social engineering can be used either to create isolation and hate between groups, or spread more solidarity, diversity being loved where it's open to reciprocal appreciation of differences, and many other virtuous bounds beyond local groups.
Not all life is story telling. Behind, there are real people with actual suffering and joys that goes beyond what even the most eloquent narrator can convey.
This word scares me because if identity is dependent on the type of product that you have or becomes larger part than it already is, especially within my generation at times. Then its quite scary to think.
A gaping hole of loneliness being filled with shallow identity being generated by and for consumerism.
As much as I think that what you meant was products alleviating the identity of the person, I think the chances of the identity itself being replaced by something more hollow is more likely as well.
Quite frankly,This word truly feels like something which comes out of American Psycho or reminds me so much of it.
Also, another point but I also feel the same feelings of hollowness from creating stuff with AI if we leave it autonomously as I mentioned with some aspect of consumerism although I am frugal. The similarities are quite a lot.
Money --> (Choice on what prompt/model you want your identity more associated with) --> (time) --> Product
Money --> (Choice on what product you want your identity more associated with) --> (time) --> product
And then repeat the cycle.
This has been a boom for capitalism but a loss for humanity, in my opinion.
To further elaborate — NYC subway routing is not effective for some kinds of trips
(notoriously: moving north-south through brooklyn/queens, east-west across much of manhattan, etc)
(Anecdotally) reliability is a huge factor for me — living in NYC, there are a few neighborhoods that would be much easier to reach by bus, but arrival times can vary by more than the length of the entire trip. Easier to just take a subway, even if it means an extra ten minutes of walking on each end.
I maintain a list of interesting personal websites. There's some link rot, but a good number of young people maintain personal sites, and some of them have blogs! (college CS/design grads, mostly.)
I don't think anyone's really optimizing for SEO. (it's not even really clear to me that that's very important any more.)
Branding is not inherently unproductive, nor is it guaranteed to produce worse watches. They may be larger and less accurate, but consumers still (evidently) find value in the brand. A Grand Seiko or a Nomos or a Patek is perhaps now even more interesting & identity-productive than a watch was in the 60s.
As technologists I think we're prone to dismissing improvements that aren't engineering-backed. But all life is storytelling, and labeling that work as "button-pushing" is… dismissive, to say the least.
reply