"People queueing for weeks for an iPhone 6;
manufacturers releasing new models every year;
devices rapidly becoming obsolete.
This is not sustainable"
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| Link to The Guardian (Pic: techradar.com) |
"I may be content with my ancient phone but I don’t, alas, exist on some higher plane: I’m as susceptible to the titillation of 'new season' or 'just in' as the next person. How could it be otherwise? Material objects are not only freighted with personal and cultural meaning but also define us: an email is 'Sent from my iPad', rather than the sender. Our longings attach themselves to things: by upgrading our gadgets, gizmos and garb we feel in some sense that we’re upgrading ourselves. Conversely, those who resist – unless emboldened by ideological reasoning – are at risk of FOLLOH: fear of looking like old hat.
"As for the manufacturers, they have to make us fall in love with an object but also be willing to ditch it and buy another. The solution? Tie us to a brand and then ply us with upgrades. Since there are now more mobiles than people in the UK, upgrade culture must persuade us that, even if we hadn’t realised it, we have a deep desire for a newer version of what we already possess. What’s more, we want it now. This plays on our most infantile inability to delay gratification – no wonder it’s so irresistible.
"There is, of course, a lie implicit in the upgrade: it sells itself as the definitive product, the ultimate satisfier of needs, to conceal its own transience. To admit that it will soon be superseded would be to renounce its own raison d’être, to pulverise its own libidinous power, to defetishise itself – which is not something you expect a fetish to do."
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