Profit was already mentioned.

Another reason is, medicine gives you (the doctor) something to point to and correct if things don't work. It's "mono-factor". You are lucky if you need more than two variables (dosage and schedule).

Something like exercise, or a surgery, depends on too many variables to make work exactly the way the doctor wants, it's "multi-factor", and if it does not work, gets you plus another doctor or medical expert in another, more applied field, more involved with your time when there are other cases on the pile.

You’re not wrong, but you can’t patent physical activity which would make it the least attractive option in their partners portfolios.

It does, in a roundabout way: people that exercise more go to the doctor less and take less medications, so insurance companies could profit a lot by encouraging people to go exercise.

Because there’s no profit in it?

Reading this article felt like listening to HR talk about how they are reforming the corporate culture while realizing that I definitely shouldn't have eaten the whole weed brownie.

Really, I get the impression that this is a distilled description of how sophomore architecture students should describe their toothpick-and-cardboard building designs in order to fulfill the university's policy that all courses must include a diversity component. It's all buzzwords and platitudes which can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways, which ultimately makes the whole peice useless, unless you want to point to some example or other that you personally like and talk about the Human Centered Design requirement while others sagely nod their heads.

I'm trying to imagine the weird edge case where any architect or designer would actually even get the chance to entertain these considerations. 90% of design work involves solving the big problems so that it fits in a budget. Then 10% is spent trying to make it look nice enough for people to not completely hate it. Where are designers and architects given such a carefree budget that they get to wring their hands over the potential comfort of a rural pakistani villiager entering their space? And if you are building something for people to use, you can just ask them what they want.

Hello and welcome! Yeah, I don't particularly focus on architecture/urbanism, but it's a great blog post for this community. Keep them coming! :)

Hi there! I'm not sure if this is the right community for this post, but I couldn't find anything on my instance that was discussing human-centric architecture, so I found this one.

Right we have screens at home

Because the whole genre is an experiment looking for a use, making the UX shit for the majority of use cases.

The point of 'Smart Homes' is to make things easier. A smart thermostat makes saving energy easier, having to command your lights every time you enter a room is annoying. And the majority of 'Smart' appliances are just examples of 'Hey look we can put an app in your toaster!'. Without anyone asking, why the fuck would you want an app in your toaster.

Why would you have a computer operate the curtains, lights, windows and devices in your house if you can also let a servant do it instead?

It's a good conversation topic for the one time your buddies haven't seen your parlor trick. Just think: if my parents come over to my smarthome, they're not gonna be able to turn on the lights because I've moved on to voice commands now. It sucks.

And entirely predictable. After so many fiascos, I really don't understand why anybody still buys this stuff.

It's nothing like they portrayed back in those old Disney cartoons. It's all become a surveillance state that brokers in your personal data in every metric. Not to mention your lamp and thermostat, etc... get used for DDoS attacks.

I'd be glad to see the smart home fad die.

Can't wait for google/ Amazon to declare no more software updates and obsolescence for my installed devices. Rich or not, its a pain to deal with.

The executives certainly deserve a lot of the blame. But most large corporations are owned by hedge funds, private equity and other layers of obfuscation that are designed to shield the powerful from accountability. After a few layers of abstraction nothing matters but line go up and if line not go up, the C-suite gets replaced before you can say "golden parachute". These guys only care for the next quarterly results and are trying to ride the gravy train for as long as possible.

Where I currently live it's literally impossible to get clothes that last over a year or two. I've had shirts fall apart at the seams, shorts that developed holes in most unfortunate places, and garments that shrunk due to washing so much I can't wear them anymore, all within the first year of use. I try to patch things up before throwing them away, but the synthetic textiles just get thin and disintegrate at some point, probably also filling up everything with microplastics along the way. It's cheaper to produce flimsy synthetic shit, and also forces you to buy new clothes every year (even if you don't follow "the trends"), thus more profit for the manufacturer.

I tend to buy second-hand stuff, because if it's being resold after use it's probably not as flimsy, and also it's better for the environment. Even then most things I buy turn out to be shit.

I have a couple of good quality clothing items that I regularly wear, but I had to ship them in from another country, pay import fees, etc. Way too much fuss when you need a new T-shirt now.

When AR goggles become ubiquitous, we'll wear simple, gray modesty garments, and they'll rent us digital clothes. The world will look however we want, lush, and expensive, but in reality, we'll live in plain boxes. "Rich" people will have bigger boxes. Reality will be reserved for the filthy rich, you'll recognize them immediately, because they won't be wearing goggles.

I think you've got a lot of people who have never been exposed to the idea of long term use of clothes. If you have the idea that the most important thing is looking good, then it makes sense to get something that you intend to throw away.

My take is this. Say what you want about Henry Ford, he was a man who truly loved to drive and wanted to make great cars. Same with old Hollywood studio bosses; horrible people who really wanted to make great movies. Now all the bosses are MBAs who care only about the bottom line. Their names aren't connected to the product and they couldn't care less about whether what they make is of any use whatsoever.

We’ll stop wearing them after a year

Who the hell buys clothes like that? It can’t be sustainable for your wallet let alone the planet.