Abstract

While the scope of the term ‘useless’ is a broad one, applied in many different ways to various social phenomena, this paper focuses on uselessness in relation to the designed objects of everyday life. I will argue ‘uselessness’ is not a property of such objects; it is not measurable, quantifiable and is not subsumed qualitatively within one theoretical perspective. There is no ‘theory of uselessness’. Nonetheless, the charge of uselessness is often and confidently made against the designed paraphernalia of everyday life. My thesis here is that we often apply the label of useless to objects which are ambiguous or nebulous and that we apply it as a confident declaration against such uncertainty.