Is the Filofax making a comeback? Seen more trendy young things carrying them, and prices for lovely vintage ones seem to be on the up.So I checked out Mark Hill a bit more and then found his latest posting on his blog about Vintage Filofax & Mulberry organisers.
As you will see he states that 'the PDA and smartphone have completely replaced the Filofax' .... you will have seen I've commented on the post already... !!!
But it was nice of Mark to link to us 'Filofax fans'
We will not be classed as antiques from a bygone era just yet, paper is alive and well in this age of electronic wireless always on communication social networked up to the minute Twitterings. It's the iPhones and other electronics that are the passing phase.
Come back in five years time and you will look at a 1st generation iPhone and think, oh I remember those. But in five years time your iPhone will be a paperweight, things will have moved on, it's expensive battery will have expired. The protocols it uses will have been upgraded, the radio spectrum it uses will have been sold on to the next highest bidder, I was on the team that sold the 3G spectrum in UK for £22.4 billion! And whilst you might be able to turn on your iPhone Mk I, you won't be able to do a lot with it, will iTunes still support such an old model?
Then again your Filofax will be alive and well, pop in a few new pages and you are ready to go. May be an antique to some people, but still working as well as the day you bought it.
OK they don't do the same job... but can you capture your thoughts so instantly on an iPhone? They don't have that same attraction and desire to want to hold it.
I proves I suppose that one person's everyday object (of desire in our case) is another person's 'collectable or antique' I'm not about to sell any of mine to the highest bidder...
.
Well done Steve!
ReplyDeleteThanks, I hope my post didn't sound too much like a 'rant'!
ReplyDeleteFilofax, or rather Filofax's concept* will never die. I have Agendus installed in my phone, but haven't touched it for yonks. Too much clicking to enter details and personalise colours etc.
ReplyDelete(* here in Asia, plenty of other brands that utilise the Filofax concept)
When I was a child in the late 70's/early 80's, nylon bedsheets were quite popular: not even brushed nylon, more like crimplene, and they felt like you were sleeping between sheets of sandpaper, but hey - they were NEW, trendy modern fabric!!
ReplyDelete30 years on, I don't think anyone even sells things like that... my point is that everything eventually finds its place, and technology that was once gee-wizz becomes either mainstream (radio, electric kettles, internal combustion engines) or obsolete (cassette walkmans) but paper has endured for millenia, and it's unlikely to ever be completely replaced.
As an aside, I remember paying around £100 back in 1990 for a really top quality Sony Walkman for my mum - the idea now is laughable! And as far as I know most manufacturers have stopped making floppy disks, another example of gee-wizz gone redundant within decades.
I'm no Luddite but the Filofax is so perfect for the need it fulfils, I don't think it will ever be replaced - and that goes double as we all become a little more aware of environmental issues, and the undesirability of built-in obsolescence.