I am looking
for a new phone. I am not a big fan of gadgets that, while they may be useful
to some people, really just end up making my life more complicated if for no
other reason than I have to try to figure out how to use them.
The cell
companies are, in fact, at the top of my list of corporations whose main
purpose seems to be to talk me into more and more expensive devices that I “need.”
How, for example, have I survived this long without a smartphone? I have no
idea. But when I sit in an airport, a meeting, or even a restaurant and watch
people who look as though removing their phone from them would be comparable to
removing an arm or leg, I’m pretty sure I don’t want anything to do with the smartphone
phenomenon.
Alas, my
phone is dying, and it looks like our family will be moving to a “data” plan
and I will be forced to pick out a new phone. In addition, new responsibilities
at work will make the benefits of accessing email anywhere helpful, given that
I may be traveling more.
So I went
online this morning to check out some options. From looking at a couple of my
colleagues phones, and considering cost and compatibility, I decided to
investigate the Samsung Galaxy. I was shocked at what I found.
The
advertising on the webpage reads as follows:
Samsung Galaxy S4
Life Companion
Make your life richer, simpler, and
more fun.
As a real life companion, the new
Samsung GALAXY S4 helps bring us closer and captures those fun moments when we
are together.
Each feature was designed to simplify
our daily lives.
Furthermore, it cares enough to
monitor our heath and well-being.
To put it simply, the Samsung GALAXY
S4 is there for you.
I hope that
disturbs you as much as it does me. A phone that will make my life “richer,
simpler, and more fun”? Really??
A phone
that “cares”?
A phone
that is “there for you”?
Before you
dismiss this as just creative marketing, consider how marketing tends to seep
into us and shape us, something that Jamie Smith has pointed out.
And perhaps we
could even wonder about people who would be moved by a paragraph like that. Is
your phone your “companion”? And to think that classic, orthodox Christianity
merely worried about putting a person
in place of God.
There is
something not just disturbing, but really sad about this. And I don’t think it
is merely idle worrying on my part. More than once my husband and I have been
out to dinner and have watched a (usually young) couple sit across the table
from each other and gaze into, not each other’s eyes, but into their phones. A
colleague of mine led a trip this past January and mentioned something similar.
The students didn’t talk to each other at dinner, except to share something
that they found interesting on their phones.
The question
with all of this is, of course, how to combat it. If a cell company knows
enough to market to the needs of the consumer in a way that suggests that a
phone is equivalent to a person, we have already moved a dangerously long way
down a questionable road.
So think
about Jamie Smith’s question about Christian living: “What kind of person is
this habit or practice trying to produce?”
