Ubiquitous smartphones drained tech of its status and coolness

Evidence

By 2016, tech wasn’t just losing its mystique; it was losing its cool. Smartphones, once sleek and expensive status symbols, had become ubiquitous. With more than 70 percent of the US population owning a device, the novelty of pocket-size black rectangles had faded into mundanity. Silicon Valley’s promises of the future—self-driving cars, airborne internet drones, seamless “wearables”—had failed to change our lives. Cars still had steering wheels, connections still relied on Wi-Fi and cell towers, and once-breakthrough devices now stagnated in small, incremental updates. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 511

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Directly supports the omnivore-monoculture thesis: when every status signal is available to everyone, nothing signals anything. Connects to Marx’s status-dynamics mechanism.

Related

• Ubiquity and unmet promises drained status from tech products by 2016 (similarity 0.90)