I spend a great deal of time contemplating the modern human condition-what's wrong with it and how it could be improved. One conclusion I've come to-greatly confirmed for me by Carl Honoré's book In Praise of Slowness-is that a lot of our culture's stress on "speed" is unnecessary. One particular wolf in sheep's clothing-new technology-promises to make our lives easier, but can actually create insatiable appetites for new stimuli, wrecking our appreciation of the only thing we really have: the here and now.
At home in lovely North Florida during reading week, I spent a few days in my dear, departed grandmother's kitchen making the last batch of kumquat marmalade I will get to make from her garden. This is a job which demands great patience (or "slowness") as each kumquat is the size a grape and contains two to six seeds. Just as the sugar and the pulpy, citrus-y fruits of my labour came to a boil, congealing into wondrous orange goo, I heard an iPhone commercial from the living room TV that took the wind out of me. The ad goes like this:
"If you love Facebook so much that you check it every time you're at the compute, just think how great it would be to check it every time you're…well, nowhere near your computer? Right on your phone." As if spending more time on Facebook should be a priority!
Here's another one: "All these years you've gone through the day without e-mail like this in your pocket, or stock updates like this in your pocket, or Internet like this in your pocket, and you survived. The question is: How?"
These ads certainly do grab your attention, kind of like a punch in the stomach. Half of me still believes they are an SNL skit. The sad, underlying message they convey is that the present moment is never good enough. Why enjoy where you are and what you're doing when there's something better online? The equivalent Canadian Rogers ads are even more sickening: four teens are sitting in a car and the girl in the front snaps an embarrassing photo of the driver with her phone. She posts it online, and before he knows what has happened, the kids in the back seat immediately see it on each of their personal Internet-phone screens and start laughing.
2008 Woodie Awards
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