gemstone (gemstone) wrote, @ 2005-11-21 13:32:00

Just one more thing...
I remember an episode of West Wing when Leo decided to give Bartlett’s graduating daughter an expensive pen. Everyone he told about his gift asked, “What else does it do?”

Last weekend, we were at Office Depot. At the checkout counter was a highlighter pen with a built-in stick-on label dispenser. How convenient is that! While you read and highlight, you have quick and easy access to stick-on labels. A time-saver indeed… about a quarter of a second of time saved each time you need a stick-on label.

Let’s talk about this “swiss-knife-multi-purpose-do-it-all-without-breaking-a-sweat” concept. A refrigerator with a TV screen; a printer that quadruples as a scanner, fax machine, and copier; a couch that reclines, vibrates, and unfolds a console that has compartments for remotes, DVDs, drinks, and frozen dinners; a mobile phone that plays music, takes pictures and movies, hooks up to TV shows, goes online for emails and news feeds, and stores all your bank and credit accounts... The list is endless.

Multi-purpose used to be as cool as a reversible jacket. Now we need to have at least five different purposes built-in to as tiny a product as possible to call it cool.

This has got to be a commercial scam. Our friendly global entrepreneurs come up with these nifty gadgets on the pretext that the innovations improve our quality of life through a long list of revolutionary benefits. Easy, fast, efficient, and convenient are the keywords. Ah, now that you know that these “necessities” exist, you can’t live without them!

Buy, buy, buy! Convenience, here we come!

Then even before we finish paying our monthly installments, convenience starts to walk out the door.

The fold-out arm rest unhinges, so the whole couch wouldn’t be the same, and we’d have to get a new one. The printer’s scanner conks out… the phone’s camera goes on the fritz… then we‘d have to buy new ones, which, by the way, has recently come out in new-upgraded-more-functions-gotta-get-me-one-of-THESE models.

We, poor consumers are slaves… swallowing these infomercials just like they want us to… spending hard-earned money on do-it-all items packed with functions we don’t use or need. We buy because we are sold to the ads that say we can’t live without these gizmos another minute of our twenty-first century lives. "What? Your refrigerator doesn’t have a TV? Ugh! Jurassic!"

Ah, well… I suppose that’s progress… inventing just one more thing that can go wrong.

sunshinysarcasm 2005-11-21 22:36 (link)

this must be why i'm not a techie. all these things that your gadget MUST have... i'm happy if i can call and text on a mobile phone. but other people need cameras, infrared, bluetooth, GPRS... yikes. the only thing i was so strict about was my laptop, but that's only because i didn't want to buy a desktop and then worry about all the peripherals. heh heh. did i mention my laptop has a webcam? a mic? a DVD burner? infrared? wireless? hee hee. but my phones are the simplest models. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	gemstone 2005-11-22 10:09 (link)
	You can see how -your- generation (I belong to the "previous" one! Haha!) is information-overloaded to the point of distraction and to the edge of... uhm... danger? ;) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)