As Chris Anderson, Wired editor,
said; technology should be/ have into one to four of the following stages to be
a success or popular:
- Critical price
(people need to be able to buy it);
- Critical mass
(should reach 20% of target);
- Replace another
technology (as paper money and credit cards);
- Commodity
(essentially free).
However, sometimes
we may find a group of people (and let's easily include ourselves?), that
cannot afford a type of technology, as a cellphone, because we are not part of
a hypothetical company's target. So, for us, the new device does not have a
critical price, the technology is not free, but even thus, we think we need it
"to survive".
And we buy it. We
buy it because we have been trained by television, by society, our friends,
cellphones advertisements, that to be "someone" we must own an
Iphone's latest version. Is it true? Since when my cellphone is more powerful
than my brain? Technology becomes a status. Status that we create to split
society (and to feel better? How?).
And as cellphones becomes “better
and better”, we stop being humans and start being robots. We start living as
someone told us to, and we do not know who we are, or even who told us to be
like this! People classify each other’s importance by the type of device we
have, we can permit someone’s entrance in society only if he/ she has this
cellphone. And so, we do not eat the dessert for a few weeks, we do not buy a
book we need to read, but we buy the cellphone.
Now it is easy to include ourselves
in society. This was our call to have the cellphone and to do not “waste” money
with food or books. Now we can play a fantasy life. Let’s all pretend that we
are better people now that we have the latest version of an “I beautiful phone”.
This is our decision, right? Humans decided to be like that, and to act as
robots that do not think or feel. After all, we need this technology to
survive.
Excellent discussion Mabel and one that will be raised repeatedly throughout the course. What it boils down to is Adam Smith's notion of what is required to live in a world without shame. In his day, you will recall, it was something like 2 linen shirts, a pair of pants and leather shoes. But today it is much more than this and the cell phone is an interesting example. We do not need smart phones to live without shame. Or do we? I honestly do not know. There are a lot of ppl out there who have the latest smart phones who, as you point out, would have been better off spending their money on something else. But we do get sucked in. Why? Are we so mindless? Are we so gullible? Are the marketers so good?
ReplyDeleteLet's think and talk about this some more.
And maybe sometimes we think that because we created the technology, we can live from technology and for technology, and we maybe forget that technology is not human and we don't interact with technology - because they can't answer!!!! And then we just forget to interact with each other....
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