Paper short abstract:

Mass customization is served by arguments like those supporting the emancipatory power of digital fabrication: giving consumers more choice mitigates the alienation of industrialisation. I argue that choice has little benefit if parametrically-customized goods are tied to systems of mass production.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I use mass customization to explore concerns about alienation from consumer goods and the possibilities for consumer/user agency that may be present in practices of customization. I outline one of the clearer value propositions for users of digitally-fabricated, parametrically-customized goods, namely the ability to get a product made to one's own specifications, a value in common with historical and niche forms of custom production. But there is a gap between parametrically mass-customized goods and goods customized through a one-to-one interaction between a consumer and a producer. I argue that the values of traditional or niche forms of customization are often assumed to be present in mass customization, whether they are or are not. Benefits like attention to the appropriateness of a good, or the ability to have substantive interplay with the producer are seldom present in systems which offer parametric mass customization. Arguments in favour of automated customization often seem similar to arguments about the emancipatory power of technologies like 3D printing: putting some amount, no matter how small, of decision power back into the hands of a consumer acts to mitigate the alienation of industrial production. I use cases of parametric customization alongside a historical case (19th century dressmakers) to argue that the romantic ideal of custom production invoked in our imaginaries of mass-customized goods is distant from parametrically-customized goods tied to the needs of large companies and existing industrial forms of mass production.