I make my own furniture. I am absolutely not a carpenter. But I hate Ikea furniture - it's made of shitty, flimsy, materials, and its design priorities are all based on cost and ease of transport, not on being great furniture that will last years and be an actual asset to the home.
This is an analogy, obviously. Ikea has been innovative, and it does provide a useful service for people; if you just moved into a new place and need to furnish it as quickly and cheaply as possible, then off to Ikea you go. But it's still shitty furniture.
My furniture doesn't look great, sometimes. My joinery is not perfect. I don't have all the tools I need to do this properly. But the design goals for each are what we need to live our lives. My wife has a stupidly high bed in her office, piled mattresses so she can spread them out if we have many visitors. I made her a bedside table that matches that height. It's a complete one-off; I won't make another that size, and we probably won't need it if we move house.
My point is that we already have this split in other areas of our lives; the Vimes Theory of boots (rich people buy boots that last generations, poor people buy boots every year). Ikea furniture. Buying a mass-produced crockery from a big store, or buying hand-made crockery from a local potter. We're just adding information and code to this split.
I’m not a furniture maker, but I have a rather close connection to the industry. I used to hate ikea furniture. In fact I hated almost all modern furniture that mass market, that wasn’t high end. I was a huge proponent of vintage furniture ( and still am), but I have really come around on ikea. They sure still make some crap, but they also make some genuinely innovative pieces that can last if you treat them with a basic level of care. I’d specifically call out / praise a few of their beds with built in drawer solutions. A few good desks too. They also have other mostly solid wood products too. It really depends. Just my $0.02.
Agreed. I was a carpenter for a long time and have built everything from completely disposable structures to things that ended up in Design Within Reach.
I think Ikea is great. Sure, the cheaper stuff consists of veneered particle board at best. But they (at least used to) use thicker veneers, often include relatively high quality hardware, and make some products that are just completely solid (stainless kitchen gear, simple but serviceable pine furniture, standing desks, some bedding).
What gets to me are places like West Elm and similar companies. Mid-Century design, but it's the same veneered particle board as the much cheaper Ikea stuff, and costs far more.
That's the thing. Ikea's alternatives are all worse in some dimension. The Amish do make good furniture though.
Agree completely. As I said, Ikea provide a valuable service. And I'm sure that for some pieces, quality is compatible with the core design values of cost and transportability.
And, to extend the analogy, I'm sure Google's AI results will be perfectly serviceable for some people in some situations.
But for my wife's odd, non-standard, situation I had to build it myself. And for some people's odd, non-standard, situation they'll need to construct (or find) a bespoke information service that matches their needs. That will probably cost them more and the joinery won't be as neat.
There's a tier of quality that's just fine... as long as you don't move it much, either from home to home or just rearranging too much.
If you do, then the unglued joints decay and it becomes wobblier and wobblier.
I want to buy you a CMOT Dibbler Sausage for the Vimes reference. Perfect metaphor for this situation. His point was that it was the cheap boots that keep people poor, so that makes me think artist and artisan patronage will be an even bigger thing in years to come.
My IKEA furniture has lasted 12 years so far, including 3 moves, with only minor cosmetic damage.
I have a 20 year old Malm dresser that made four moves and is doing just fine.
(I do have it screwed into the wall as it’s been recalled for tipovers.)
> But I hate Ikea furniture - it's made of shitty, flimsy, materials, and its design priorities are all based on cost and ease of transport, not on being great furniture that will last years and be an actual asset to the home.
I have seen/heard this a lot lately, but all the Ikea furniture I have ever had has been great. Among others, had a chair that was good for like 11 years lol
Do you think that AI could actually free up time in your life in other areas, so that you could spend more time doing the things you love like making furniture? Or maybe help you directly in your furniture-making, by perhaps helping you to research things?
Please don't misunderstand: my point is not "AI is good."
It is problematic in many ways. My point is that I think the "AI versus actually doing cool human-crafted stuff" split is... a misguided, maybe even harmful, mental model of a more complicated reality.
> Do you think that AI could actually free up time in your life in other areas, so that you could spend more time doing the things you love.
Personally, I don’t believe that would be the case. Jevon’s paradox mixed with the natural tendency to exploit others. One could argue that technology -in general- didn’t really save people time by itself, it’s regulation - a social construct, and I am counting both cultural and legal enforcement of them as well- that did. Just look at how workers in countries without your European-style protections fare. Wikipedia’s article on the Chinese 996 [1] has a nice map for deaths due to long working hours by country, notice the dominant colours for each quadrant of this (projected) globe.
Pre industrialised societies’ labourers were limited by daylight and travel distance. The modern availability and abundance of artificial lighting, mechanised transportation, and telecommunication means their grand kids are expected to -and often do- toil every waking moment.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
What time is AI going to free up for me? Can AI go to the grocery store for me, do my laundry, do my dishes? Can it let me clock out early? The spoils of AI do not go to individuals
AI, as it stands, only can save you time with non-human interaction “intellectual” tasks on a computer. So really not much
It's excellent for R&D.
It's not AI, but there's Doordash and Rinse if that's what you're trying to optimize for. The robots will be coming out, soon enough, and then we're all in trouble though.
> the Vimes Theory of boots (rich people buy boots that last generations, poor people buy boots every year)
This made me think of a fascinating exception to this
Luxury-brand cars usually get turned over every couple years so as to avoid their inevitable maintenance cliff
It is an interesting exception.
The really rich people that I know of drive 10-year-old beaten-up Land Rovers, though.
I think there's a nouveau-riche slice of folks who buy "luxury" cars thinking that they confer status. There are brands like this in every industry, that adopt all the pointers of "luxury" except actual quality.
Ikea has long existed before the Internet and over capitalization.
I have several Ikea pieces in my home, and I've had some for over a decade. If you build Ikea stuff properly, are selective in what you purchase, and use wood glue when constructing, then it lasts as long as anything else really.
Their flat packed designs are actually innovative. People can outfit an entire room by using a Honda Fit to transport.