Christa wrote about her love/hate relationship with her mobile phone, and this got me thinking.
My first reaction was: *Just say no!* – Disconnecting the TV from cable & antenna was one of the best decisions I made when I was about eighteen years old. This gives a certain disconnect from society. You won’t know what Sex and the City is all about, who this singing lawyer is, what the X-Files are all about, and so on. I called this “loosing touch with the Zeitgeist”. But there are benefits, too. You don’t get to see ads for Coke Zero, hamburgers, mobile phone service providers, and telephone sex, and so on. My examples are probably totally off. It just goes to show that I don’t know what they’re advertising for.
Whenever we go on holidays I realize that all I really need is some basic closing, my passport and credit/debit cards. I tell myself that with the plastic, I can buy the rest. I don’t need any of the gadgets. My favorite stereo in my living room is still the first one I bought about ten years ago: A Denon D-F88 (2006-01-14 Gadgets); I watched DVDs on my Playstation 2 for the longest time. I bought my first DVD player two years ago. I bought exactly one digital compact camera (a Canon Exilim S-2) which is still in use, and recently I bought a digital SLR camera (a Pentax K100D, 2006-12-07 New Camera). I’m on my second MP3 player; I used to have an Eratech EMP-Z, now I have a Cowon iAUDIO G3.
As to mobile phones… Congratulations to the person who thought up the ingenious plan of using mobile phones hooked to service contracts as loss-leaders. I’m sure that mobile phones only took off because of how they are cross-subsidized. What this means for me personally is that I already had several phones. Every two or three years, I got a new one for free, or for less than CHF 20.
Incidentally, I think that this kind of financing that hides the “real” cost of things is what helps us destroy the planet while we’re having fun. We’re not seeing that all these mobile phones are produced in factories polluting the environment, requiring rare raw materials (lithium tantalate contains Tantalum) that cause war in remote corners of the world, being shipped across continents in lorries… Just as we don’t directly see and pay for the pay caused by flying airplanes, driving cars, or eating meat. Or living in a modern society in general, in fact.
A short excursion due to the civil war claim. I thought I had heard something like it and wanted to see whether I could find some support for it. Wikipedia provides a link to the Tantalum-Niobium International Study Center, and on their web site they write:
The central African countries of Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda and their neighbours used to be the source of significant tonnages. But civil war, plundering of national parks and exporting of minerals, diamonds and other natural resources to provide funding of militias has caused the Tantalum-Niobium International Study Center to call on its members to take care to obtain their raw materials from lawful sources. Harm, or the threat of harm, to local people, wildlife or the environment is unacceptable. ¹
Anyway, back to gadgets and consumerism… I don’t really share Christa’s love/hate relationship with mediating technology like phones and chat because I don’t really have a choice in this respect. My family lives all over the world. Yes, it’s true that the phone or the chat window can remind you of how far away they are and how artificial the entire conversation is, but at the same time I am reminded of the letters I used to write from Bangkok home to friends and family. They’d take weeks, and half of them got lost in the mail. Or when I was four or five and we lived in Namibia. The family would sit around a table and listen to tapes our grandparents sent, and then we’d record answer tapes to send back. Compared to that, I’ll take my mobile phone anytime!
As for wasting money on unnecessary gadgets… There are some. I used to buy lots of CDs until the entire copyright discussion started to piss me off. The angrier I got with the labels, the less I bought. These days I listen to InternetRadio and real radio and to the CDs I bought when I was younger. Living in another disconnect, I guess. I buy a lot of books, and in the last half year I bought lots of roleplaying material. I’ve had five consoles (PS1, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, Xbox360) and bought at least ten games for each of them. I also had two portable consoles (Color Gameboy and gp2x), but those never took off. I bought the Gameboy because I wanted to know what Pokemón was all about. (I still don’t get it.)
Take home message: Just say no – disconnect your TV!
#Life #Gadgets