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10:22 PM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
March 18, 2013
Every few days we get to hear about another newfangled smart phone. The frenetic speed with which these companies are manufacturing gadgets with more features almost makes anything you have just bought obsolete in a few days. And it isn’t cheap.
At some stage one has to ask if such breakneck speed was used for finding medical cures or saving lives or reducing poverty and all this innovation and genius was channeled to make a better life and defeat the common enemies of mankind, would we not all be better served.
Does it really matter if your phone has an iris scan or only reacts to your fingerprint or does the tango? It is almost absurd in extremis that all these eggheads sit there creating these devices and giving them more options than blades on a Swiss knife and actually conning the public by exploiting the end users mindset to be one up on his mate.
And it is all justified by giving the impression that it is competition between rival manufacturers. First the smaller the screen, the better it was. Then the screens became larger, the better. Then the labeling started. Feature rich. Eye motion. Hi tech, 3 D effect. Hi def (on a phone?????) surround sound, an endless litany of facets that are so unnecessary.
Certainly, there has to be a market for this one-upmanship but is it real or artificial in that people are being brainwashed into buying what they do not need. Slick marketing techniques and packaging add to that notorious ‘feel good’ texture that now spearheads retail. I feel good because I have a more expensive Iphone than yours, so I am a better man.
Illogical? Not so. It is working and we are being made into zombie suckers in this crazy and very expensive race to nowhere in a hurry.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
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