Ravishankar Design

Every city or town had a market place or the Mall road equivalent with a unique flavor of the place and character to its shopping spaces and the things sold. When one has visitors from another town, they would all make a trip to an MG road or Main Street or Linking road or the 17 sector, to check out something which they don’t find in their streets back home or things unique to this town like chikkon kurtas or kolhapuries etc. Today you walk these roads/streets and find the same brands and the same clothes or accessories any city you go to. Nothing new or novel about visiting a market to shop or browse in a new town. And they talk of shopping experience. Brands can get so boring!!

There is something fundamentally being missed. IT media devices and systems are spread across demographics doing their own bit…as programmed. There are researchers in industry and universities working 24/7 (cliché of the century) on the future of these systems and devices extrapolating formulations of the next ethereal environment. The mobile today allows you to connect with others, gives information, is a personal assistant, etc; the PC connects you to the world web, helps in computing, designing, plays games with you, etc; TV gives you news, infotainment, etc; Ipods, radios, etc provide music, information and so on; and newspapers, magazines doing their own thing. This was only to put the context in place before I ask the hollow question! The primary need of food, clothing and shelter, lets for the time being assume has been satisfied for everyone in the world. Then what is the next level of need and are we satisfying it? A housewife of a mid/upper middle home has all these devices a...