Dow Jones and Consumer Culture

From an article by Vauhini Vara & Vijith Assar in The New Yorker

The graph shows the timing in which companies have been added to or dropped from the Dow Jones from 1896 to 2013. The DJ tells something about consumer culture in the U.S, and many parts of the world over the years. They say

. . . the news on Tuesday that the Dow will let go of Hewlett-Packard, along with Alcoa and Bank of America, is a reminder of the fickle nature of consumer culture: even the technology companies that we fetishized not long ago have fallen from our good graces, and from those of the Dow. It’s not hard to imagine someday in the future when Facebook and Twitter end up on the Dow. If that happens, and if history is any guide, they, too, won’t last forever. 

But note the permanence of GE.
The current list of companies in the DJ is here.