Why the Umbrella Does Not Evolve

The umbrella, with its two conflicting properties — obsolete and enduring — has an important question for us. Why must something evolve at all?

Some circumstances cause unique facial expressions. For instance, when you open the toilet door and find a person sitting on the commode, what you encounter for a moment is a philosopher who contemplates you calmly, saying something like, ‘ah’. Or, when a man falls off his bike—he is briefly on his fours on the road, introspective and trying to solve the change in his altitude. Or, more commonly, a woman’s umbrella curls up in the wind and she smiles in a sheepish way as if the world is laughing at her. She then desperately tries to restore the umbrella with one hand (that technique seldom works though). Our embarrassment with the public incompetence of our umbrellas is actually unnecessary. It is not we who are stupid, it is the umbrella. It is clumsy, it takes away 50 per cent of our deserved hand movements, it is prone to getting lost and, more importantly, it is a myth that it keeps us dry in the rains.

Yet, the umbrella as a technology is so complete that it will not evolve any further. In fact, it has not changed much in centuries. We introduced buttons to unfurl the umbrella and managed to fold it so much that it could fit into the second most perplexing thing in the world—your wife’s handbag. But the fundamentals of the umbrella have remained unchanged.

People working at the US Patent and Trademark Office may feel that it is only a matter of time before the umbrella mutates into something more remarkable or even useful. According to the New Yorker magazine, there are over 3,000 active patents around the concept of the umbrella, ‘including a weather-forecasting umbrella…a combined pet leash and umbrella… a flying machine using umbrella-type devices’. In fact, there are so many umbrella ideas that America’s largest umbrella maker, Totes Isotoner, does not accept concepts anymore. But I refuse to believe that the umbrella will become anything more than what it is today or what it always has been. A technological mutation of a product can occur only if it makes economic sense. The perfect umbrella, if it is ever invented, will be expensive because the first generation of a technological breakthrough is invariably pricey. And there can never be a market for expensive umbrellas. Walking in the rain is one of our most replaceable pursuits. There are many easy alternatives to walking in the rain, like say, not walking in the rain.

The umbrella, with its two conflicting properties—obsolete and enduring—has an important question for us. Why must something evolve at all? I am totally with the umbrella on this. Recently, I agreed to get rid of my 12-year-old Samsung TV (I will always love you, my friend, you cared for me when I was single and lonely and without friends). Now, I had to buy a new flat screen and was faced with a global debate: ‘Which is more evolved—Plasma or LCD?’ Suddenly the television was so complex, with so many features that can be judged. But it was obvious that an overwhelming majority of the features were plain rubbish. Companies had to complicate things because the buyer always wanted something more. But there was really nothing more to offer in a TV. There is an umbrella in every TV.

Car dashboards, too, are hilarious for the same reasons. After you have created enough glass meters and buttons near the steering wheel, what more can you do? Mobile phones and, strangely, long distance running shoes, too, are caught in this evolution deceit. They are always changing, adding some moronic feature. One of the few meaningful transformations of an old technology is, improbably, in the concept of the book. Amazon’s Kindle, the electronic slate that enables you to download any book, or increase the font size of the reading material, is an honest conceptual leap.

We have a natural misunderstanding of evolution as something that is about change for the better. However, any biologist will tell you that this is a deeply flawed and incurable human understanding of evolution.

Most of the time in nature, a species does not get better in time, just different. That did happen with the umbrella.

About The Author

Manu Joseph

Manu Joseph became a journalist because he did not have to crack any objective-type entrance exam to be one. He is the author of two novels -- The Illicit Happiness of Other People, and Serious Men, his first, which won The Hindu Literary Prize and was one of Huffington Post 10 Best Books of 2010.