eBay has a new commericial in which execs at a board meeting pick on a fellow who breaks out a paper pad and pen while they all have electronic devices. The others make references to his being in some sort of pre-IPad stone age and, therefore, not hip. He proceeds to log onto eBay during their chatter, and he quickly buys a device while his pen then leaks an inky deposit in his shirt pocket. My opinion is that the pen was crying.
I, too, had a few words said to me for using pad and pen at a meeting at work recently. I’m a writer, though, and they work better for me than using a laptop. Besides, most of the people at the meeting had e-pads and Blackberrys, none of which I had either. Thirdly, I used a pad in a portfolio which was a present from one of my superiors. I certainly wasn’t going to pitch it just because we’re in the portable gizmo age.
How superficial and wasteful we are in this electronic age. With all due respect to the industry and eBay, who are all out to keep their own families eating three square meals a day after all, it seems there is no end to one-upmanship. Folks buy an Apple product in November for $500, $600 or more, then chuck it for the next one in March. The waste products from these things, such as mercury, go to chemical cesspools in places like India after poor wretches canibalize and rip apart the workings of discarded electronic products (if the article on “60 Minutes” rings true). We don’t seem to care that we discard so much cyber junk just because a new fair weather friend has come along.
What is wrong with pen and paper? Why is the art of penmanship condemned to die? Is it because we want to be lazy, or because we’re so worried that other people will think less of us if we don’t follow the trend? It reminds me of stories of products which were useless but everybody had to have, like the Pet Rock. Remember those? Think about it: we paid money for a rock in a box!
This “cost of WOW” really disturbs me, because we Americans tend to spend a lot of money for little reward. Is the cost of some stranger’s approval an annual replenishment of a $700 device? Is social standing valued by jacked up prices on materialistic junk? No, and I’ll say that to the end.
In the “Dune” series of books by Frank Herbert, mankind became apathetic with the advantages of electronics, and a few smart people formed alliances with machines to subjugate the dumb public until they rebelled and took back their ability to think beyond the “Wow” factor of convenient devices. I hope that doesn’t happen in our or our children’s lifetimes. I’d rather be able to write in cursive with my own hand on something that can be recycled, like paper from a non-electronic tree.
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