Have you noticed how city skylines all look the same? That public objects, like park benches or lampposts, have become increasingly minimalist? Or how, instead of slathering their rental properties with patterned carpets and lace curtains, landlords now decorate everything in grey? 

Then and now!

This isn’t just speculation. In 2020, the Science Museum conducted a survey of household objects over the past few centuries, finding that their colour and shape have become much less diverse over time. Everything is now monochrome and square, according to the survey, because everything is made from plastic. 

Changes in the colour of objects over time by Science Museum Group

As I sit across from my laptop, my supposed portal to a million worlds, I’m struck by how similarly flat the experience feels, the colours, faces and words all looping through the same few pixels. The objects around us are becoming increasingly utilitarian, with technology rendering our bodies more passive, and I’m noticing a significant erosion of detail: the aesthetic and sensory variety that gives objects and experiences their vitality, and the taste and agency that reflect our identities back to us. 

Much like the “loss of aura” that Walter Benjamin described in Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935), this lack of true detail explains why even the most colourfully patterned dress that Shein can print onto polyester has no aura compared to the design it was ripped off from. It works in reverse too: the office block designed by minimalist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe holds far more significance than many thoughtless skyscrapers going up today. 

Being surrounded by a world stripped of detail – objects with no aura, experiences with no friction – says a lot about the ideas shaping us.

There’s a link between neoliberalism and the loss of detail throughout mass culture, because design has increasingly been simplified under capitalist incentives to cut production costs, broaden appeal and boost profit.