This is the time of year when media campaigns for the latest digital
products are apt to go into overdrive. Schools are back in session, and the
holiday sales blitz is getting underway. For the latest computerized
gizmos, that means an escalating media drive — revving up news coverage,
PR hype and advertisements. Often it’s hard to tell the difference between
the three.
At the risk of sounding like a techno-scrooge, I take a dim view of
media excitement about the very latest in digital gadgets. No doubt the new
versions of laptops or handhelds offer many virtues. But umpteen gigabytes
can never make up for a media culture and a political environment largely
out of touch with human empathy.
The new mega-gig innovations are marketed as awesome pluses without
downsides. But one big problem is that we’re encouraged to believe in
purchasing our way into solutions. Huge expectations for satisfaction from
the multimedia Internet — and rampant enthusiasm for faster and more
compact technologies with the latest dazzling features — routinely get us
into thinking like consumers with the speed of a broadband download.
Rarely mentioned is the economic stratification that the digital
wonderland both reflects and exacerbates. While computer prices have come
down in recent years, the overall costs of partaking in the online world
are another matter.
Read the full column.