On Elizabeth Shove’s Converging Conventions of Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience:

I adore Shove’s take on the way that technology and our concepts of safety (comfort and cleanliness) continue to “ratchet” to more and more extreme concepts. I see it as a culture that has evolved, survived, because of our resourcefulness, and now that we have less to fear, we adopt new ones. It seems that the new technology doesn’t necessarily push people to higher standards, but enables them to collect, to hunt and gather, and then, once these things end-up in their homes, consumers have to rationalize their use and then new habits get passed on as the standard and the cycle continues.