I was watching a television show last night on BBC 2 called the men who made us spend, it validated so much of the cynicism I hold about the world of people. That world we call a society. It never ceases to shock me, the waste, the attitude, the idolisation of the next must have thing. I must specify that I am no Luddite. I, much like nearly everyone else in the world, embrace useful innovation. Anything that improves our lives or does something non-useful but provides entertainment (which I guess you could argue is useful as a stress relief) is fantastic. Innovation is a must, it is required for human civilisation to progress enough to benefit everyone on this small rock. What I am not so keen on is the systems of manipulation that drive much of this 'innovation'.
Too often innovation is falsified by companies through techniques such as marketing or planned obsolescence. These techniques drive the wheels of consumption. Often in places where the need for upgrading the current technology was not at the forefront of concerns in pre-consumerist society. It is the Capitalists relentless drive for ever increasing wealth accumulation that causes this disposable attitude towards perfectly functioning items, unless of course they are designed to break. The actual needs of those consuming these goods are never truly considered, instead they are created, it is almost exclusively a manufactured desire for change. One man's answer perfectly sums this up, when asked about the new features that have improved the iPhone 45032s "Um... basically probably not much, there's a finger print scanner which is very cool". When questioned about queuing for three days for an upgrade on his phone, which does pretty much exactly what his current one does, he replied "at the end they brought out something new that we all want"*. What the guy said wasn't as important as the gist of it, which was that they want to buy simply because it is the new thing to own. It doesn't have to last, why would it? Not when these consumers, these wallets, all of us... have been conditioned to accept that what we buy, often for substantial sums of money, will be falsely upgraded 3-12 months down the line. It's the American Dream in action, the few can get very rich selling items to people who have no real need for them, made particularly sweet as these consumers are all to happy to buy into it. To hell will the important things in life, I've got the new Google Glass, I have the latest piece of nonsense and can show how amazing I am to the world through this item I was told to consume... What do you mean I look like a twat?
It's not just digital technology corporations at it either, they all are, some more widely publicised than others. 'The men who made us spend' highlighted how planned obsolescence began, through the humble light-bulb, in a bid to increase profits. They simply wanted them to last shorter lengths of time to increase the need for them. Hell yeah I here you say, who needs any kind of reliability? Screw the environment, what has that ever done for us? To continuously package minor improvements in technology as must have items is one thing, and as long as there is an improvement (however slight) it could never be too objectionable. However, the idea of throw away consumption that was adopted so readily by the Capitalists did not cease with items that can be upgraded, it extended to single function 'consumables'. [Enter stage left].... IKEA, who through clever advertising managed to change the western worlds attitude to furniture. It no longer served a specific function, a chair was no longer a chair, a table became something else, it all began to say something about you. IKEA and their ilk had done the remarkable, they had effectively made function, durability and reliability secondary considerations. This new drive to consume in every aspect of our lives is as Zygmunt Bauman states packaged around a "constant pressure to be someone else". In these few words he expressed the essential characteristic of consumerist society, the new capitalism, we no longer buy things because we need them, we buy them because the advertisers tell us we want them, they tell us what to think about the types of people who own these desirables, and in a magical way they say something about you.
We have all become George A. Romero's zombies and we are all loving it.
* at least I think he said that! the guy mumbled a lot of that.
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