The barely there iPhone Air is in line with trends in tech, design and art – unsullied by thought, risk or humor
There’s a new iPhone. Again. Improbably, we are on the 17th iteration (give or take) of the product that single-handedly ruins our lives every day with incessant vibrations alerting us to some horrifying calamity, plus every song in the Bruce Springsteen back catalog. Coming up with new features for the never-ending information machines we all keep in our pockets isn’t easy, but this time, Apple managed to develop a big (or should I say small) one. There’s now a thinner iPhone Air, which is being marketed as the thinnest iPhone ever. These gadgets have never exactly been gargantuan, so it’s kind of like identifying the tiniest grain of sand in the desert. Still, people around the world are fascinated by the sheer lack of phone here.
Technology, design, and art are all trending toward a certain scarcity model, prepping us for a lack of bells and whistles, as though both your parents are unemployed and they want you to expect fewer trips to Disneyland. Life on Earth feels more and more like the experience of entering a Sweetgreen – beige, spartan and unobtrusive. Sure, iPhones haven’t gotten cheaper, but they have certainly gotten … lesser. The iPhone Air is so small, I feel like I’ll sit on it and it will slide seamlessly up my rectum, never to be seen again. For some, I’m sure losing your device inside your bowels might be a feature, but I think it’s a rather uncomfortable bug.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
