Dusting against the wind

What's the point of dusting? I'm being totally serious here, I don't get it. If there is dust on your stuff you may want to get it off, but is the air above your stuff truly best place to put the dirt? I assume that once the duster-imposed flurry of air has subsided the dust simply settles right back onto the surface from whence it came. Is there something about the mechanics of dusting that I don't understand?

Why is dusting seen as such an integral part of cleaning? In the thousands of years that people have been brushing off their tchotchkes you would think someone would have developed a better system. Even the robot maid from the Jetsons dusted! (In fact, I think cartoon maids are often shown dusting. I believe cartoons to be interesting windows into cultural attitudes, so Rosie shows that we naturally assume that we'll be dusting our moon bases.)

As a person who is allergic to dust, I don't want all my dust particals redered arisol for easy inhalation. But I also don't want dust to build up, waiting for me like an evil lurking skin growing over my stuff. Can dusting somehow reconcile these two ideas? If it hasn't so far, I don't see how kicking up another cloud is going to help anything in the future. Perhaps what the dusting technology and practice needs is an entire paradigm shift.