Wants and needs.

About a decade ago, they remodeled the Acme in my parent's neighborhood, and in addition to moving it around the block; they seem to have quadrupled the size of the store. What was once a funky, manageable 1960s pavilion is now a daunting labyrinth the size of a Nebraska cornfield. If you need to find spaghetti sauce, a store manager will hand you a printed map. The other night, trolling the wide aisles on an empty stomach, my eyes blurring as I navigated the canyons of jars, bottles, cartons, and cans, I wondered, is there anything here that I actually need?

Shopping always gives me a slightly queasy feeling, nausea really. There is something perverse about being forced to choose from 15 identical but different laundry detergents. And then there are the fabric softeners, the color-safe bleach, and the stain removal stick . . . its not just detergent-- it's everything. Clothes, furniture, media, car, appliances and coffee. As participants in a first world economy of mass consumption, we're used to being bombarded with choices. In fact, we expect it. Our desire for the newest, the fastest, and the cheapest has become so ingrained in us that we've alienated ourselves from our understanding of what we really need.

The reality is, we don't just want the Nikes or the PS3 or the Trek mountain bike, we believe that we need them. We also believe that we need to update our music collections, upgrade our gaming PCs, and redecorate our living rooms. If we acquire these new things and then continue to upgrade and renovate them, we will feel better and perform better and contribute more.

Obviously, once you get past nourishment and shelter, all need is created. Need is contextual. Obnoxious as it sounds, certain people really do need to wear Armani to the office or Hollister to school in order to maintain their earning power. Others need to express their creative point of view in the way they furnish their work/live spaces in order to maintain the kind of successful reputation that keeps work coming in. A status conscious society necessitated products that bestow that status. What you wear, what you drive and how you carry your digital files determines your value. Your clothes, car, and computer are emblems of your market value. Your market value is a key factor in your survival. Our needs are over-identified and pushed into the market place at alarmingly high speeds. It's the work that goes on before a creative review is instituted that creates and then productizes our needs before we even have them. They're watching us.

Most companies build their product development process around a series of "Go/No Go" assessment points - moments when a committee of managers decides whether to move forward or backward with the process. Focus groups, user testing, anthropological observation studies and trial and error are among the standard tools designers and product developers use to hammer out new products and services. Scenarios are another popular technique. A group of brainstormers develops a story around imagined capabilities, technologies, situations, and characters. Possible products become part of the story. Questions are asked: "What would this character need in order to collect data she needs during her heli-taxi ride to the space-depot?" The answer some sort of portable wireless data-gathering device, of course. Preferably one that fits into her handbag. Designers, get to work.

Simplification and speed are usually the motivations behind new products. A new car, a faster CPU, and more kitchen appliances might help. But software, with its endless and relatively short cycle of upgrades, is perhaps the most addictive category of buyable self-improvement. Often, when you buy a new software program, you may receive a years worth of upgrades for free. After that, you have to pay up to keep up. Skincare products work the same way. The free samples run out as soon as you're hooked. You get addicted to a process and then you keep paying for the products. You've bought a subscription to a more convenient life. You've taken out a mortgage on satisfaction. Pay! Produce! Pay! Produce!

Then there are product categories that are wrapped around pleasure and leisure time, where simplification and speed are not factors. Scented candles, luxury bath products, gardening and home decor furnishings, video games and other entertainment products fit this category. Then there's the nexus of the two --convenience and luxury. Those bargain brands may moisturize, deodorize, and rinse clean, but an $8 bar of scented soap will transform your morning shower into a "soothing, healing aromatherapy session."

You'd almost think we've always pampered ourselves with aromathera-peutic products, but in fact, these products are the offspring of a cultural movement toward personal development. Faith Popcorn used to call it "Nesting." Now it's part of "Bunkering", an anxious reaction to the alienation of the automobile, the telephone, the suburbs, seasoned with a fear of the perceived increase in crime. In an information economy, we need tangible markers, anchors, touchstones we can buy to feel fulfilled, connected, spiritual. Aromatherapy used to be as simple as taking a walk through a meadow on your way to the well. Now you find it in aisle ten, next to the kitty litter. . .

Once this self-nurturing movement was identified, designers and developers delivered products to fulfill it. But sometimes the products herald the shift, not vice versa. Case in point: the personal computer, which in just 30 years has created a whole new way of life and a whole new set of fufillable needs.

There have been some brilliant successes, wherein a need has been successfully identified and the product that fills it becomes ubiquitous. A contemporary example is Yahoo, the World Wide Web directory. Fifteen-odd years ago, two Stanford students decided that the web was too confusing to navigate without some kind of guide. Bam! Yahoo was born. It's now the ubiquitous directory that is often mistaken for a search engine. Most of today's "knowledge workers" can't imagine going through a single day without checking into Yahoo at least once.

We've become spoiled children. Just when we really think we need something -- even moments before --it appears. We're addicted to convenience and pleasure. We're overloaded with choices. Were distracted from real meaning and real satisfaction. Ironically, it is our constant search for meaning and satisfaction that keeps us buying the latest and greatest.

Humans possess the need to create. Creating for the pure joy of it is what distinguishes us from our sisters and brothers in the animal kingdom. And I'm not just talking about the self-centered and atavistic need to procreate. We need to make new stuff to affirm our creative selves. It's why we need to reproduce (kind of). It's why we revere art. And it's why we shop - shopping feels creative. The success of Martha Stewart is evidence that we so aspire to the creative act that we will even pay to participate in a kind of creativity voyeurism. We admire her shopping talent.

We're living in one of the most innovative periods of history - yet it's all consumer driven. Much of the innovative work is happening in the intangible realm of service, information delivery and software. The marketable and fashionable iPhone, the business geared Blackberry, and even the Nintendo DS are guiding us towards images of the future of communication. Yet our popular visions of the future bear little resemblance to today's consumer culture. The Star Trek television programs represent some of the most reasoned and sophisticated future scenarios imaginable. Perhaps the show's popularity has something to do with the underlying optimism the series projects. In it, the citizens of the Federation, our great-great-great-grand children, have moved beyond the short view, beyond the frenzy of material acquisition and its subsequent boredom. There's no money and everybody wears the same thing. It's who they (the Federation) are and what they contribute- not what they wear - that defines their characters.

Will objects themselves cease to be determinants of value? In some ways, it is already happening. The Gap Corporation, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Hollister are all certainly doing their best to woo us away from the vagaries in fashion to a sensible, fully-coordinated and universally accessible (read: bland-as-hell) wardrobe of t-shirt and distreesed denim uniforms. Albeit each company has its own idea of how snowy-white we should look. Ikea, Pottery Barn, and Crate & Barrel are guiding us all to "create" affordable, tasteful and identical habitats. Cities are losing their cacophonous local character as Hot Topic, Wal-Mart, and GameStop move into the city center. It makes sense, really. On one hand, the malling of America seems like a horrible thing. But is it really so bad if we all wind up having pretty much the same taste? Designers, inventors, innovators and even we, the humble consumers, could spend our time thinking up solutions to, say, famine and disease. As long as we can learn to conserve our natural resources and our cultural monuments - including groovy 60's Acmes - maybe the gradual homogenization of the consumer sphere isn't such a bad thing.