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And what if consumption has superseded itself with the advent of Internet advertisement?

Since commercials are now possible on global scale, while being contextually aimed at specific audiences, it becomes less and less interesting to mass-produce for crowds subjugated by manufactured desire for standardized objects. Manufacturing myth, like cars, TV’s or CD players, is no more necessary to reach a sufficient audience for your business. For you are no more limited to sell your stuff to the guy next door and you don’t need to sell at million-scale either. With little investment, you can propose your Aberdeen-made blueberry and minth liqueur to a car mechanic in the suburbs of Beijing, who, just by chance, happens to like that sort of thing. If he’s in a hurry, you can even ship it with FedEx. All you have to do is to have your ad placed on spetialized sites (say “weirdliqueurs.com”): something youknowwho contextual ads and co. can take care of for you in no time.

What you can do, anyone can. Any product can be distrubuted and sold on global scale. You no more need to find yourself an optimal client nest beyond hills, seas and roadway crossings. You don’t need to spend thousands on commercials in general magazines that’ll only bring something if you sell millions of products. Small things can survive – many of them, in fact. And with the small things, the small desires for them. Many small desires that haven’t been manufactured for you by dinosaur brandmakers but that just happened to you, on last-year’s Seoul trip, say, where, looking at the Han river, you began to like that blueberry liqueur.

What this possibly means for our World is the end of mass production, mass labour, mass consumption, mass braindeath. Some time soon, you’ll make money by being creative again.  And at this very moment, we’ll enter into the new age of diversified consumption.

As for the new pathologies of the eight billions of singularities to come, that is another story to be told by science-fiction.

Lately, I noticed again a couple of car wrecks being torn apart to iron plates on the top of some wagon. A week after that, a mechanic changed the car battery of our old VW Golf. Seeing him making that, I thought:

“Hell, this old thing is still running. The only thing it was missing is a new battery. Sure, it consumes way too much gas, in comparison with more recent machines, but why would we buy a new one?”

Some car makers really try to sell you new models with pretense of environmental concern, but a new bodywork (the french say “carrosserie”), with seats, tires, plastic interior, gears, and who knows what else… has to be made: and the fabrication of those things actually costs gas energy, too.

The thing someone should really come up with is a plug-in motor:

The plugin motor is sold in separate parts, which can be connected to each other in such a way as to be able to plug the motor into any bodywork. When new technologies arise, you should not have to buy a new car, but simply replace your motor, or parts of it, as long as the bodywork is good.

All its parts should be worldwide ISO certified, so they can connect to each other in any combination. A car upgrade could then be comparable to what is done with software: you don’t throw your machine away, but only upgrade the OS, or little parts of it.

Just imagine your beautiful Chevy or vintage Trabant with the latest Japanese “Hybrid Inside”. Or an elctromotor, or whatever this civilization will have to come up with in the next thirty years.

Last but not least, the use of plug-in motors  provide local jobs to many people. Many mechanics would be needed to produce custom motors and motor upgrades on a regular basis. Garage work would become more creative. And people would be able to pay these new generation mechanics by all the money not spent on buying whole new cars. As opposed to car production, plugin motor upgrading has to be done locally and therefore cannot be delocalized: the jobs it provides are thus sustainable.

Is this feasible? Please post any drawings, links to similar projects or objections.

Image: from Flickr by: Paleontour, may 2008, Creative Commons BY