Cast-off household gadgets really do embody evil, concludes an academic theorist interviewed in today's Christian Science Monitor. It takes him a while to reach that conclusion, but the journey is pretty revealing. I'll tip my hand right here: I hate clutter in my house, and the idea that some people need to buy things they don't use in order to feel better about themselves. Too many of us suffer from this particularly hideous modern malady. The Monitor:

Recent research calculated that Britons have accumulated almost $18 billion worth of household "white elephants" - gadgets that are rarely if ever used. That's 1 percent of the nation's GDP. For some, it's the sandwich toaster that seemed like a good idea at the time. For others it's the electric knife that only comes out at Christmas, or the juicer which seems twice as messy as it did when demonstrated on the shopping channel.

"We are constantly buying new fads," says Niki Bolton of the online insurer esure that conducted the study. "Take the breadmaker. A few of my friends have got them. They start off making bread rolls for a few days and then give up." Bolton admits she hoards a bit too. "I've got a sandwich toaster tucked away, and a footspa and face steamer. A lot of things like that up in the loft."

Some of these dust-gathering widgets are unwanted gifts - as much as $7.2 billion according to esure. A quarter of those surveyed said they had bought a gift that they suspected would remain in its box. But the majority are things that people buy for themselves and then leave in the box. Like the toaster that brands "I love you" onto the side of your breakfast slice."

OK, now here's the requisite expert in "consumer culture" to do that old, "On the one hand....but on the other hand...." thing.

Richard Elliot, an expert in consumer culture at Warwick Business School in central England, says from an economics viewpoint it would be facile to dismiss such hoarding as a net waste of resources. He says that sometimes it's the idea of the gadget rather than the material usage derived from it that is important in consumer societies. In short, it's all about the having rather than the using. "We are consuming the meaning of the good, rather than the good itself," he says. "The theory is that if you get the right meaning, it might complete your view of yourself."....Mr. Elliot says, moreover, that this consumerism is an important motor for western economies. If we stopped buying trivial contraptions and things to make us feel better, then growth in rich countries would be severely impacted, he says.

I am now made whole, for while I have long championed economic growth, I have also long maintained that the manufacture and consumption of useless stuff is a lousy basis upon which to predicate even a portion of that desired growth.

...morally and financially, the trend may be harder to justify. It coincides with a boom in credit in Britain in recent years and a sharp rise in the number of people with debt problems. The gadget consumerism often bewilders the older generation of Britons, who came of age during the privations of the 1940s and early 50s, when you couldn't buy something unless you'd actually saved up for it first.

And from a moral viewpoint, this excess that coexists side by side with want and hardship is "a miserable thing," Elliot adds. "Satisfaction and meaning and a general boost for the self used to come from church, or society, other people in essence," he says. "But now what you have is goods replacing people."

Mediated experiences, such as video and computer games, e-mail and "virtual communities," and 80-channel cable TV surfing have replaced actual physical activity, face-to-face community engagement, and face-to-face conversation for an increasing proportion of the populace in "developed" countries. And we are the worse for it.

At least the nearly-useless gadgets invented by practitioners of Chindogu can never - under the movement's guiding principles - be mass-produced. Which ensures that the appreciation has to do with the thing itself, not its reflection on the self.

TECHNORATI TAGS: USELESS GADGETS, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

TO COMMENT: The regular "comment" feature is not in operation. E-mail comments to address under "Contact" on main page masthead, and I'll add them, here.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 23, 2005 10:52 AM