Story of the Stonecarvers
Asgeir Persson
Designing and creating spaces for the change you and I want to see in the world.
Once upon a time, there was a people who made everything they needed of stone. Tools, cutlery, chairs and toys, all made of stone. A lot of the people were stonecarvers and they were all very talented at that. At the end of each week they had a stone market where they all showcased their work. Market visitors came to look and found things they wanted and needed.
One day one of the stonecarvers had a new idea, he would add polish to his crafted wares. This made a huge impact at the market and the people looked at his polished stonewares and wanted those. His wares sold out and the other carvers noticed that their wares got less attention. The next week more carvers added polish to their crafts, and next week even more until all the stoneworks were shining. The market visitors came to look and found things they wanted and needed.
The stone carver that came up with the polish idea, longed for that attention that he had gotten that first day, so he would add even more polish to his wares.He added so much that it started taking time from his carving. He had to choose between quality crafting or extreme polishing.He chose polishing and soon he was once again the center of market attention. And once again the rest of the carvers followed, and those that didn't felt a declining interest in their wares. This continued until one day when there were more stone polishers than stone carvers.
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The things sold at the market shone like the sun, but were in all other respects useless. The tools didn't tool, the cutlery didn't cut, the chairs were unsitable. The toys still worked but they were all just polished stones, no longer cars or animals. The market visitors came to look and found things they wanted but no longer things they needed. And even if they saw something that they needed they didn't recognize it.
The people felt unsatisfied but wasn't really sure why. The stone polishers no longer felt a pride in their work as all they produced was shining stones, no longer useful things that people needed. How can we give this story a happy ending? What advice would you give the carvers/polishers? What advice would you give the market visitors?
Functional Designer of physical spaces for user-centred services
3 个月Thanks for sharing! I guess this story illustrates steps of how consumers demands and product features balance each other)))
Working towards a more beautiful world for our children - Prozessbegleiter I Berater Dialog und Kommunikation
3 个月Beautiful little story Asgeir Persson, thank you for sharing. It really shows the change of paradigm for me that our society went through as well. The tough question how to get back to more purposeful living. I guess my advice would be leaned to Buckminster Fuller: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” I guess my advice would be: Go and make some good and useful stone things. Because if everybody has only shiny stuff noone actually needs, make something people actually need. But if we do it like that: Will we turn in circles in the end, everybody jumping on board of the new (old) idea? What if both was fine and could coexist?