> <snip>
> it's not clear how selling baby bottles under the logic of a market
> economy doesn't also transgress the "distinction between public and
> private life". that anyone makes them in the first place, assumes the
> need for them as replacements to breast feeding.
>
> in _More Work for Mother_, Ruth Schwartz Cowan writes about how firms
> that made technologies for running the household surely did want to
> instruct the consumer in exactly how to use them and why. one has to
> wonder why firms would spend so much money on advertising literature
> if they could simply sell microwave ovens regardless as to how they
> were used, without going to great lengths to show people how those
> ovens were to be used and how they were supposed to improve their
> lives.
>
i could hardly put this better. based on my corporate work experience, i do believe that what's happening here is at least in part a misunderstanding of product development and/or an underestimation of the lengths to which companies go to anticipate and create the trends of private life, and to insinuate themselves into private daily life.
really, where the hell else is the money?
j