Word Association

"How has technology helped us" Ellen DeGeneres asks in her article"This is how we live". Better yet Ellen: how have the words associated with technology manipulated our views on how technology has really helped us. So many items are stamped with words used to describe “innovations” that are supposed to better our lives. Washing machines, HDTV’s and computers are branded with slogans like “new and improved” and “ultra” or “fast”. You read the words “plug and play” and you immediately think “this will make life easier”. The arrangement of these words can even have an effect on the buzz of the device, and its price. If you arrange a few of these in a row like, “ultra quad core technology”, you’re taken back with the sophisticated arrangement of words. It sounds so good you don’t even want to ask what it means. Your contempt just to say to your friends “It’s got 4 cores like yours, but mines ultra, and yours is not.”
The marketing execs know how fascinated we get with big terms like 1080i, or now high-resolution 1080p. They have an entire books dedicated to catch phrase manipulation. Studies are done, consultants brought in, no detail left unnoticed. Maybe it’s not the technology that can make us so mad; maybe it’s the imaginary bliss that is supposed to accompany its use. Maybe that is the real reason why some of us feel it can be more of a burden than a necessity.
We slap our cell phones in frustration when they don’t work right, “Damn thing, this is the latest phone from Motorola. Why doesn’t it work”? We expect from these products to have a joyful experience of ease and reliability. Commercials are full of these utopian worlds of technology feeding our brain that we can all organize our madness with one simple device. Even the actual definition of technology is kind of sketchy “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes”. Since when did life ever have practical purpose?
Whatever the case is, technology has mad our lives easier in a complicated way. With so many devices in our lives, any break in the chain can cause innovation to turn to aggravation. Our laptops organize our lives and give us the information we want at our fingertips, when they work right. Cars get us from place to place working in harmony with our schedule, until they break down. And no one can do without a cell phone. The mess that ensues when a cell phone is lost can be cataclysmic . How are you going to call your phone insurance company when the only phone you have is the phone you’ve lost.
“A landline? I’ve never heard of it. What in the hell is that”?