
The Dematerialization of Consumption - jseliger
http://edge.org/response-detail/26750
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jseliger
This Edge.org piece reminds me of Paul Graham's 2007 essay "Stuff:"
[http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html](http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html):

 _I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people
are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can
't afford a front yard full of old cars._

Having too much stuff makes a person a good candidate to dematerialize some of
it. Indeed, this year's weird It Book, _The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up:
The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing_ by Marie Kondo, can be read
as a how-to guide for dematerializing one's stuff.

Perhaps taking books, music, and videos online means that one trades physical
clutter for intellectual clutter. But the intellectual clutter is at least
searchable.

