bookofjoe

Immaterialism is the new black

Rob Walker coined a new paradigm today in his New York Times Magazine column.

One word — the title of his piece: "Immaterialism."

Excerpts follow.

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Spending real money on things that don’t exist still sounds “fringe-y and aberrant” to many United States consumers, observes Jeremy Liew, managing director of Lightspeed Venture Partners, a venture-capital firm. (Lightspeed has invested in some digital-goods sellers, although none of the ones mentioned in this column.) Yet it has been going on for years in elaborate games like World of Warcraft or Everquest, as players buy tools, weapons and the like for digital characters. Moreover, Liew adds, “this is a set of behaviors that has been commonplace in Asia and, increasingly, in Europe.” Indeed, in April, a company called Changyou.com Limited, based in China, went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange. With annual revenue of around $200 million a year, it is (unlike many well-known Web 2.0 companies in the United States) profitable, and it makes most of its money by selling pixelated goods to game players and virtual-world users in China; as of late April, the market’s judgment put the company’s valuation at more than $1.3 billion.

As more of us live more of our lives in digital contexts, it seems plausible that immaterialism will become more common. Consuming things made of bits might sound weird, but actually it offers a lot of the same attractions that make people consume things made of atoms.

Consider the Fort Worth, Tex., company Alamofire.... Josh Williams, a founder of Alamofire, figured out the appeal of collecting pixelated stuff by accident.... Really, he figures, it’s not so different from what inspired earlier generations to collect postcards or other gewgaws. But, Williams adds, without “all the physical crap.”

Perhaps immaterialism comes more naturally to younger people who take the digital extension of quotidian life for granted, but the digital-stuff consumer base is clearly expanding. Facebook, which opened its virtual-gifts shop in 2007, doesn’t comment on its finances, but Liew has estimated the social network’s digital-stuff revenue at around $35 million a year.

“People are behaving in exactly the same way they’ve always behaved,” he [Liew] said. They’re simply doing so online “because that’s where most people are spending their time.”

... the gap between materialism and immaterialism may not be as wide as it seems.

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For what it's worth, here's my synonym for immaterialism: BNA.

Stands for "bits not atoms."

I coined it on April 20, 2005.

You could look it up.

Extra Joint Ring

Designed by Fabian Seibert.

Latex rubber.

€55.

bookofjoe in this weekend's Financial Times 'How To Spend It' magazine

You could look it up (or just look up top).

I was gobsmacked this morning after turning the page to Jonathan Margolis's "technopolis" column — my favorite FT feature — to see that in the lower right hand corner, reserved for his "Silly Street" item, right there on page 27, was my very own name along with bookofjoe's URL.

But wait, there's more: he termed boj "estimable."

w00t!

Makes my decision to reup for another year seem prescient.

Thanks, Jonathan!

Wheelbench = Wheelbarrow + Garden Bench

Designed by 31-year-old Rogier Martens, made from Accoya wood.

Follow the sun (or shade), as you prefer.

€990.

PleaseDressMe — T-Shirt Search Engine

It is what it says .

[via Deltaschnauzer, Laughing Squid and Milena]

Shark Shower Cap

Think outside the shower space.

Wear yours to work and see if you suddenly don't find you get much more done, without all the interruptions and whatnot.

boj tip: make sure you're facing a wall while you work.

4" shark fin.

$6.95.

Wanna mix things up?

No problema.

Don the Little Devil Shower Cap (below)

for a nice change of pace.

"Plastic with snug elastic edges; 3½"H devil horns; one size fits most children ages 3+ (and some adults)." 

$6.95.

Irving Chais, Surgeon-in-Chief of New York Doll Hospital, Dies at 83

Chais (above) told the New York Times in 1990, "We've been in business since 1900 and never lost a patient yet."

Here's Dennis Hevesi's May 1, 2009 Times obituary.

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Irving D. Chais, Manhattan Doll Surgeon, Dies at 83

Irving D. Chais, who in his 45 years as the owner and chief surgeon of the New York Doll Hospital in Manhattan reattached thousands of heads, arms and legs; reimplanted fake hair shorn by scissor-wielding toddlers; and soothed the feelings of countless doll lovers, young and old, died on April 24 in Manhattan. He was 83 and lived in Manhattan.

His daughter Dana Pisani said he died after a long illness.

In a cluttered, brightly lighted second-floor workshop at 787 Lexington Avenue, between 61st and 62nd Streets, Mr. Chais and two other doll doctors had hunched over operating tables (well, work benches) since 1965. Stacked nearby were boxes labeled “hands,” “fingers,” “wrists,” “wigs,” “German eyes,” “French eyes,” “American eyes.” Lining the shelves and piled in boxes were thousands of dolls, new and antique, from as far away as Afghanistan and China. Some were the size of a clothespin, others as large as a 4-year-old child.

The hospital drew doll lovers from around the New York metropolitan area. “There are certainly other individuals who repair dolls,” said Donna Kaonis, the editor of Antique Doll Collector, a monthly magazine, “but as far as I know it was the only retail establishment in Manhattan that repaired dolls.” Over the years Mr. Chais was the subject of many newspaper articles.

In 1987, when a New York Times reporter wandered into the hospital, a 70-year-old teddy bear had recently been checked in, the victim of a dog attack. It was missing its nose, eyes and fistfuls of stuffing. It probably cost its original owner $5, but the current owner had agreed to pay $350 for its extensive surgery.

“We reconstructed the whole bear, and it looks fantastic,” Mr. Chais said at the time. “People get very attached to these things. Sometimes you have dolls and animals that have been in the family for five and six generations.”

The New York Doll Hospital had been in Mr. Chais’s family since the early 1900s, located at three other sites on the Upper East Side before moving into the walk-up at 787 Lexington. It started as a beauty parlor and wig store owned by a distant relative who had refurbished her own childhood dolls and was soon receiving requests from customers who wanted their own huggable toys repaired. Mr. Chais, who had worked in the family business since 1945, bought it from his sister Ann Lancet in the early 1960s and continued to run it until a month ago.

“From plush to plastic, we fix it,” Mr. Chais said in 1993, pointing out that he was as likely to be repairing a 19th-century automaton as a Barbie. He said a 90-year-old man had recently come in with a Popeye doll he really cared about. “It was like he was a 6-year-old kid.”

Irving David Chais was born in Brooklyn on Aug. 22, 1925, one of three children of Abraham and Dora Metnick Chais. Besides his daughter Dana, he is survived by another daughter, Alison Hirsch, and two grandchildren. His marriage to the former Rose Kaufman ended in divorce.

After graduating from Lincoln High School in Brooklyn and attending City College of New York, Mr. Chais served in the Army during World War II. He then joined the family business.

On Thursday Mr. Chais’s daughter Alison was at the hospital waiting for the last few dozen customers to pick up their repaired loved ones. The hospital will close by the end of May, she said.

“We’ve been in business since 1900,” Mr. Chais told The Times in 1990, “and never lost a patient yet.”

What are they?

Answer here this time tomorrow.