Saturday, August 12, 2017
Six years later....Windows didn't "solve" anything
I actually commented on this commercial back in 2011. I didn't go back and look at the post, but I'm pretty sure I said something like "yeah, right- what people really want is to get the Very Important Information they want more quickly so they can get back to their real lives. Sure, they do. No, they don't. Because people actually like staring at their phones and if you give them faster connectivity they'll just use that to stare at more things on their phones."
I'm pretty sure I wasn't proven wrong. In 2017 our phones can do more, faster, than they could way back in 2011. And stop me if I'm wrong, but I haven't noticed a decrease in the amount of time people spend staring at their phones.
In fact, I feel pretty safe in arguing that what seemed like stupid, time-wasting, zombie behavior in 2011- walking down the sidewalk with eyes fixed on the phone, sitting at a restaurant and staring at that phone rather than talking to the person you are "with," and basically incorporating that phone into every aspect of your life no matter how bizarre it might have seemed a few years ago- has become so normal that I suspect a lot of people look at this ad and say to themselves "yes, really. And? So? What's the point?"
I also think it's safe to say that the drug dealers who peddle the idea of nonstop electronic stimulus in the form of Permanent "Connectivity" have won their battle with civilization, and restaurants of the future will feature single-seating because our phones don't need chairs.
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This is a rather trite arena in which to apply it, but when I see this ad I think of the famous Audre Lorde saying "the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house."
ReplyDeleteIn other words, smartphones are not going to rescue us from the tyranny of smartphones. They are just going to make us more dependent on smartphones.