The Rise of Technology Addiction

Stupid selling to Stupid.

Engineers are rarely burdened by the needless want for such gadgets, if they have them, it is because they need them to perform their work, not a case of having it for having its sake.

Gadget designs rarely perform as well as the as a dedicated technological design, they make compromises for styling, reduce research and development to reduce time to market, and reduce lifecycle. Engineers look for performance; to an engineer, if it is engineered right it looks right i.e. the Spitfire, F1 Car, or even heavy equipment.

The claims of enhanced skills in multi-tasking are the benefit. What's the point if your attention span cannot go beyond any goal that is right there in front of you? This benefit is detrimental to communicational, and innovational, skills.

Your take on this raises an interesting point.

Are those who use communications technology, etc. to 'get a life' more likely to purchase stupid things like a vibrating razor with 5 blades, or a toothbrush that has a piece of ribbed rubber attached on the back they can brush their tongues with?

Is there a danger that over-attachment to gimmicky gizmos is making us into a species of low-level intelligence? If so, who is behind this entropying influence, and what is their motivation?

What a potential field day for the conspiracy theorists this direction of thinking offers!

Mark

The problem is not with technology, but with the never ending search for profit. Technology is constantly making life easier; but advertisers are constantly brainwashing us to the point where we can hardly chose what we really require. So most people end up parting with hard earned money in return for dubious advantage. Personally I think things like the internet often lure the un-wary into frittering away time which can be better spent in creative work. Perhaps the education system should be geared to steer young people round the pitfalls of a society run mainly in the interest of commerce. But of course the education system too is run largely by commercial interests! So it is an unlikely goal.

The problems is, to compete to feed the every growing population, our best survival mechanism is greed. Ingenuity is rarely driven by the want for accumulation of material wealth; it is taken advantage of for those needs.

As you rightly observe "ingenuity is rarely driven by the want for accumulation of material wealth". So inventiveness is built into us. Even with no competition we will invent new things just for the heck of it. I live in India where most families live on $1200 or less a year. We have all the technology and skill to solve the problems which keep the average man on the street poor. Yet due to market pressure most of the technology goes into high end automobiles which choke our roads, cosmetics, and many other things which 4% or 5% of the population can buy.

"Stupid selling to Stupid" I feel the crimp from this. My wife and I have cell phones, never wanted the darn things untill we would relocate during summer months while still in school costs of land phone hookup was same as 3months of paying for nothing. Cell phones were the only practical solution if we wanted to be able to contact each other.

My rant: Why the hell can't I find a decent cell phone, I don't want it to txt, pix, i-tune or ring tone. I want the darn thing to function as a phone, dependable and durable. I don't want some cheap crap battery that barely lasts a year and falls off. Is there such a thing as a gimmic free cell phone? All these darn teenagers have the market all f'ed up. Where are the electronic devices for the working utilitarians that would love nothing more than for all my work tools (they may be fun to use ;) ) to work like work tools, not hip toys. And if they could come in square enclosures with slightly rounded corners so that they stack nicely that would be great.

Side rant; who the heck had the brain fart to round the top of PC towers? There goes another 1.5 ft^2 of usable surface space. Probably the same knot head that put the drives and ports behind little doors on the front of the machine. What the heck? Why? Thier always open so I can use them.

End of rant.

How about a nice soft furnished PC tower that is incorporated into a sofa. That way when your PC needs to be upgraded you get a new sofa as well.

Over-consumption-blues, is here to stay: Many candy and snack items are marketed so that it's package or wrap cost much more then the consumable inside, and impossible to open without scissors or a sharp blade; There are many deals teasing you to: "buy this, and we'll let you buy that (another item, usually unrelated), with a discount"; You may have a product warranty of a new gadget (e.g 32 Mb Flash disk-on-key) for three years when you know it is likely become obsolete in less than a year.

We, "The rationalistic adults" may think we are hard to fool with, but a whole new generation is actually "educated" or at least "conditioned" to buy something cheaper than it's vacuum-sealed-wrap. This is conditioning young people to except a formula for disaster as a normal and viable conduct.

Try these bits of frustrating TVapidity having to do with mangling the English-language rules of grammar:

A commercial for AIG (auto insurance for older safe drivers)

-showing a hairy 20-some year old man in a sports car with loud music

announce voice over "You don't drive like him, so why should you pay the same insurance as him?"

(and just to keep things on an equal footing, showing a 30-some female driver impatient at somebody in front of her for coming to a complete stop at a stop sign)

"You don't drive like her, so why should you pay the same insurance as her?"

ouch!

-and-

An ad for the Ford motor company, where two ditsy adults are driving along; and he's explaining to her that the 'rule' is "i before e, except after c"; and suddenly she comes up with tons of exceptions that 'prove' it's a meaningless rule, including a half-dozen that apply to the missing second half of the real thing. She's starting to look like a genius! They conclude with him conceding to her about the uselessness of the rule as they let the "rottweiler" into the back of the car.

duhhh!

(You don't drive like he/she [drives/does], so why should you pay the same insurance as he/she [pays/does]?) Some linguists may disagree, but they are not so much interested in the rules of grammar as in general usage.

(i before e except after c, unless there is "ai" [an 'A' sound], as in 'neighbour', or 'weigh'.) Of course there are the three or four (in total) well-known exeptions to this rule, such as weird, etc.

OOPS! Apologies to Ford. It's a Hyundai commercial. Just saw it again.

Mark