The new iPhone is an emblem of our miserable minimalist era | Dave Schilling

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There’s a new iPhone. Again. Improbably, we are on the 17th iteration (give or take) of the product that single-handedly ruins our lives every day with incessant vibrations alerting us to some horrifying calamity, plus every song in the Bruce Springsteen back catalog. Coming up with new features for the never-ending information machines we all keep in our pockets isn’t easy, but this time, Apple managed to develop a big (or should I say small) one. There’s now a thinner iPhone Air, which is being marketed as the thinnest iPhone ever. These gadgets have never exactly been gargantuan, so it’s kind of like identifying the tiniest grain of sand in the desert. Still, people around the world are fascinated by the sheer lack of phone here.

Technology, design, and art are all trending toward a certain scarcity model, prepping us for a lack of bells and whistles, as though both your parents are unemployed and they want you to expect fewer trips to Disneyland. Life on Earth feels more and more like the experience of entering a Sweetgreen – beige, spartan and unobtrusive. Sure, iPhones haven’t gotten cheaper, but they have certainly gotten … lesser. The iPhone Air is so small, I feel like I’ll sit on it and it will slide seamlessly up my rectum, never to be seen again. For some, I’m sure losing your device inside your bowels might be a feature, but I think it’s a rather uncomfortable bug.

Technology used to be clunky and even a bit embarrassing, the domain of the lonely nerd. My family had a “computer room” for most of the 90s – the place we hid the gray, awkward Compaq PC that allowed me to access pornography, instant messaging apps, and Star Trek promo photos. Whatever dirty business needed to take place on that glowing screen was meant to be done in private. Computers were ugly, industrial machines for hard work or antisocial digital wandering. Then, Steve Jobs asked: “What if that dumb gray box was beautiful, simple and cruelly trapped you in a never-ending cycle of desire and self-hatred? Plus, the entire back catalog of Bruce Springsteen.” The first iPod and iPhone were descendants of the miraculous Macintosh computer, which revolutionized personal computing. But, for me, the height of Apple’s design success was the colorful, translucent iMac desktop. Back in 1998, the iMac offered a computer that wasn’t drab, but candy-coated, maximalist and something you’d actually be able to stow in a place of honor in your home. It was true design and had more in common with the bold work of the Memphis Group design tradition than the stuffed shirts at IBM. The iMac looked like it should have been in Pee-wee’s Playhouse rather than some dimly lit vestibule at my parents’.

iPhones, on the other hand, value minimalism above all else. Yes, you can get them in various muted, metallic colors, or customize yours with a case that celebrates your favorite sports team or boldly declares that you “Can’t Be Arsed”. But for the most part, Apple offers a clean brand of futurism where nothing about the object offends (except the content you can access with it). This is the way of everything now – minimalist wardrobes, bland farmhouse living rooms, restaurants so pared down that they barely register as more than a kitchen and some tables.

While in London this summer, I saw the latest revival of the musical Evita at the Palladium, directed by the king of minimalist theater, Jamie Lloyd. Lloyd is known for sparse set design, barely there staging, and bold technological innovations in productions like the Tony Award-winning Sunset Boulevard. Evita is a period piece about the Argentine celebrity and political figure Eva Perón. It takes place in the 1950s and was created in the 1970s. Historical context matters. It’s usually staged with sumptuous sets and period-appropriate costuming. What Lloyd chose to do is strip all of that down, place its characters on a dark, nearly empty stage, and offer next to no sense of place or time. Evita, then, is presented to the audience inside a black void, with scantily clad dancers flailing about in front of a large, lit-up sign that says, simply: “EVITA”, in case you forgot what you wandered into. The dystopian phantom zone where Evita takes place is a manifestation of how it feels to live in the perpetually wired digital age of 2025. Lloyd is also responsible for a new production of Waiting for Godot in New York, which similarly has almost nothing on the stage for the actors to interact with. At least there, it’s kind of warranted.

I was one of the only people who walked out of Evita with a sour look on my face. The orgasmic rapture of the surrounding crowd made me feel like an old fool, desperate for ball gowns and flimsy plywood buildings. But what troubled me was the realization that this aesthetic isn’t an outlier, it’s the unquestioned norm. Less is considered more. Being “tacky” is seen as the greatest imaginable sin. Odd, considering who’s the president of the United States and what he’s done to the White House, but maybe that’s the origin of all this cold minimalism. To be spare and quiet is to be the opposite of all that golden grotesquerie. Minimalism is the new status symbol of the upwardly mobile. Interior design is overrun with cold, Scandinavian influences. The art direction of HBO’s Succession was a window into the tactile expression of iciness that defines the modern-day uber-rich. It leaves me feeling hollow, and as alone as I was in my parents’ computer room.

Minimalism is a means of control, a way to assert dominance over the physical space – rooms unsullied by thought, risk or humor. Minimalism’s iron grip on reality is not honest or articulate. It’s a manifestation of a world that is actually out of control. The iPhone screams chaos at us, but it looks clean and perfect. It’s the ideal delivery device for madness, because it seems so restrained on the outside.

Evita is a bloody tale of revolution and propaganda and authoritarianism. Staging it like Elvis’s Las Vegas residency in the 1970s wipes all of that out. Without the culturally specific or historically significant aesthetic touches, it robs the story of anything that truly makes it a story at all. It’s like being trapped in an empty room with a flashmob or a roving band of Santacon drunks. Minimalism sells us the notion that we can be masters of our environment, but the truth is, we have never had less control over our destiny.