{"id":23872,"date":"2019-05-11T17:25:59","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T21:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=23872"},"modified":"2019-05-11T17:26:03","modified_gmt":"2019-05-11T21:26:03","slug":"zozo-redux-or-did-i-just-waste-1500-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2019\/05\/11\/zozo-redux-or-did-i-just-waste-1500-words\/","title":{"rendered":"ZOZO Redux, or Did I Just Waste 1,500 Words?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Yusaku Maezawa<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Well that was quick<\/a>. Around 18 months after launching their ambitious \u201cZOZOSUIT\u201d product, the Japanese clothing company has shut down all international operations and is no longer offering the custom-fit service. Quartzy, which seems to have an unhealthy obsession<\/a> with ZOZO and its founder and CEO, Yusaku Maezawa, has covered the rise and fall of ZOZOSUIT pretty well, so I\u2019ll let you catch up over there. But I wanted to post something with a few quick reactions to the demise of \u201cCustom-Fit Clothing for a Size-Free World\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first reaction when I received the email letting me know they were shutting the service down was, \u201care they going to keep my data?\u201d The answer, of course, is yes. More specifically, \u201cAll body data will be anonymized and rendered unidentifiable by July 31, 2019.\u201d It\u2019s an old story that anonymized data is everything but<\/a>, so color me unimpressed. One assumes they will be using the data for a future custom-sizing related project, or, given their recent financial troubles<\/a>, selling to an interested acquisition or merger partner. Remember how<\/a> their Privacy Policy<\/a> claims to \u201cnot sell your data to third parties, ever\u201d? Now that it\u2019s considered \u201canonymized\u201d is it still \u201cmy data\u201d? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I put on my scholar hat (to be honest, it\u2019s just a red beanie that I ironed a DSA patch onto) and had a few broader questions. Right now, I\u2019m working on a dissertation that looks at the history of those designs which we use to self-report pain to our doctors. You know, like the smiley face chart on the wall at the doctor. I\u2019m exploring questions of who designed them, when, how, etc. I want to contextualize their prominence in the experience of someone actually experiencing pain. And so of course, I am considering a chapter on new ways to facilitate pain self-reporting\u2014mobile sites and apps with body diagrams and color codes or EEG-based offerings that promise \u201ctrue\u201d readings of someone\u2019s pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The problem is, what happens when the latest and greatest goes defunct? I dropped 1,500 words<\/a> on ZOZOSUIT back in October and, while it was a great excuse to put on a spandex onesie and teach readers about Henry Dreyfuss Associates, did I jump the gun? I suppose that\u2019s the luxury of writing for a blog like Cyborgology\u2014we\u2019re focused on what\u2019s being promised next, not what\u2019s guaranteed to stay. Still, I don\u2019t see that post aging very well. I worry about the same thing when picking which apps or services to include in my PhD research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a struggle any scholar working on tech and culture has. Even the most exciting books I\u2019ve read that came out in the last year document and analyze websites that are not longer active. When our collective attention (and venture capitalist\u2019s funding) jumps from latest app to newest device, it\u2019s tough to predict what really has staying power. So I suppose the best alternative we can hope for is that something we\u2019ve documented has some sort of influence as a precedent, a critical step in the genealogy of something big to come. Who knows, maybe in 2040, when Cyborgology turns 30, an emerging scholar will need some sort of reference to understand where that multi-billion dollar digitally-fit clothing industry came from and they\u2019ll stumble upon my post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If so, I hope our image archive has degraded by then\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The author in his ZOZO suit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gabi Schaffzin<\/a> is a PhD candidate in Art History, Theory, and Criticism, with a concentration in Art Practice, at UC San Diego. He’s glad to know that those jeans really didn’t fit<\/a>\u2026it wasn’t just him being super un-hip.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well that was quick. Around 18 months after launching their ambitious \u201cZOZOSUIT\u201d product, the Japanese clothing company has shut down all international operations and is no longer offering the custom-fit service. Quartzy, which seems to have an unhealthy obsession with ZOZO and its founder and CEO, Yusaku Maezawa, has covered the rise and fall of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"ZOZO Redux, or Did @GabiSchaffzin Just Waste 1,500 Words?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967,19864,10055],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-data-based","category-meta-cyborgology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2071"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23875,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23872\/revisions\/23875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}