> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt
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# Our Obsession With Less and Its Co-option by Silicon Valley
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/our-obsession-with-less-and-its-co-option-by-silicon-valley-6921cb825d63b74bb82f6188/
- Published: 2020-05-31T04:01:29.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:06:56.000Z
- Description: Kyle Chayka’s new book, The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism, probes the corporate world’s love of minimalist design and what it might mean.
- Author: Hrag Vartanian
- Tags: Podcast, Kyle Chayka, minimalism, Sunday Edition, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:41 (2019, 2020, part 2)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2020/05/minimal-coffee-1460.jpg)

(image via flickr.com/147592390@N06)

In [this episode](https://podcast.hyperallergic.com/episodes/our-obsession-with-less-and-its-co-option-by-silicon-valley-ye6nkXeq?ref=hyperallergic.com) for [Sunday Edition](https://hyperallergic.com/tag/sunday-edition/), we welcome Kyle Chayka to examine Silicon Valley’s taste for minimalist design. Is this just the latest development for a style that has a long history but only emerged into pop culture during the 1960s and ‘70s when a contemporary art movement emerged to propel the taste for less into a global phenomenon?

Chayka’s book, (Bloomsbury, 2020), is a highly readable book that examines the historical precedents of minimalist design, its incarnation as contemporary art, and how it was co-opted by architecture, design, and fashion companies to represent a new, generic sense of luxury. I also want to mention that the author should be [no stranger to longtime Hyperallergic readers.](https://hyperallergic.com/tag/kyle-chayka/)

The music for this episode is Darkstar’s “Timeaway,” which is taken from the new album *News From Nowhere*, courtesy of Warp Records ([warp.net/artists/darkstar>](https://warp.net/artists/darkstar?ref=hyperallergic.com))  

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