JUNE 7, WEDNESDAY

STILL SHRINKING

I‘ve mentioned this before, but this shrinking was discussing yesterday still amazes me. Years ago at the beginning of the computer age I had a small radio shack computer with a tiny one inch high computer screen on which I could do word processing. I thought it was miraculous. But that shrunk into a fully capable laptop which shrunk to a powerful computer with a tiny screen that we called an iPhone, although phoning was only a small part of its capability, and that shrunk to an Apple Watch where I could still make phone calls. And as the each device became smaller and smaller I could first transport it easily in a computer bag, then put it in my pocket and have it with me most of the time, and finally strap it to my wrist and have it with me all the time.

But it is not just that the device got closer and closer to me, but what it contained expanded as the device has shrunk. A good portion of my house is given to storage including the storage of a lot of books. I don‘t need to store books any more because all the books I can possibly read in the next few years are in my pocket on my iPhone, and I can buy more ebooks from Bookbub for $2 apiece. Not only books, but I have almost all the world’s available music, classical or popular, on the cloud and available on my devices. The same is true of magazines. And my sound system has shrunk from the former Hi-Fi set up, to the small HomePods across the room to earphones on my ear with the sound quality just as good. I can take all my music with me. The same is true of the paintings and photographs on my walls including huge numbers of available digital art which I can look at on my iPad and in full size on the Apple Vision Pro, if I ever get one.

This makes me realize that I could shrink my living space as well. When I walked down my street last night I realized that in almost every modest house on the street the children have moved out and one or two people inside have much more space than they need.

But if we didn‘t have things—furniture, books, paintings, and collected stuff—the space we need could be much smaller, still. I discovered in Europe that refrigerators, heating devices, kitchen storage can be much smaller than here. Bathrooms can be much smaller. The only space I use in the house is one table with electronic devices on it and one bathroom and small kitchen devices. I could move into a tiny house and have everything I need.

If I lived in a tiny house with one small main room and a tiny kitchen and bathroom, my heating and airconditioning, my costs would be much less and could be covered by having solar panels on the room. In fact, the Eco Capsule twenty foot trailer that I have looked at again and again on line has everything you need to live comfortably within a small space with solar panels and rainwater collectors. It doesn’t quite fit into a carry-on bag but it can be moved from place to place, so that not only is it possible to take anything you need to travel anywhere in the world, but you could travel anywhere in the United States by taking your tiny house with you, and if you are abroad you could likely rent an Eco Capsule at a moderate price.

So what I am realizing is that everything is shrinking, everything I need to live well. This is the opposite of the American dream of a big house and lawn in Suburbia with the need for two cars in the driveway. And it certainly is the total opposite of the luxury yachts and multiple grand enormous houses that the super rich are loading themselves down with and dazzling us with. But it seems to be the direction the world is headed in.