1. The personal touch (Attention)
2. The unique history
3. Authenticity
4. Atoms*
What we are seeing is a drastic drop in the cost of knowledge and an exponential increase in it's availability.
As physical objects become more fungible, capable of being replaced by functionally identical copies, the aspect that will make one object more valuable than another is it's unique history, the knowledge about it, and the social meaning of that knowledge.
Does the fact that you know that Gucci watches today are crap mean that a Patek Phillipe is more valuable? Does it become important to you to know the history of the workshop that produced the watch? Is a watch that had been pawned by a refugee fleeing the holocaust more valuable because you can point to it and say 'A man bought his life with this.'?
A watch that you commissioned to your own specifications from a master craftsman should be the most valuable of all since the master's shop time is limited, and you needed to know enough about watchmaking to make an intelligent request.
One aspect of the consumer society has always been about the social status and peer approval created from purchases. The ground of status is shifting away from the inherent quality of the goods and towards the knowledge of the relationships embodied by the goods.
* arrangements thereof yes, but unless we get some new physics, the actual elemental material is unique, you can't fax yourself more helium when you are running low.
As physical objects become more fungible, capable of being replaced by functionally identical copies, the aspect that will make one object more valuable than another is it's unique history, the knowledge about it, and the social meaning of that knowledge.
Does the fact that you know that Gucci watches today are crap mean that a Patek Phillipe is more valuable? Does it become important to you to know the history of the workshop that produced the watch? Is a watch that had been pawned by a refugee fleeing the holocaust more valuable because you can point to it and say 'A man bought his life with this.'?
A watch that you commissioned to your own specifications from a master craftsman should be the most valuable of all since the master's shop time is limited, and you needed to know enough about watchmaking to make an intelligent request.
One aspect of the consumer society has always been about the social status and peer approval created from purchases. The ground of status is shifting away from the inherent quality of the goods and towards the knowledge of the relationships embodied by the goods.
* arrangements thereof yes, but unless we get some new physics, the actual elemental material is unique, you can't fax yourself more helium when you are running low.