Tech and Time

Living in this modern day and age, the age of technology and consumerism we can find that people are becoming more and more reliant on objects and personal gain. Has this made us more selfish as individuals? And do we feed off of instant gratification?

I remember a time not too long ago when I went to the iphone store. I had an appointment to see them about my phone battery, as we know iphones are not the most reliable phones in the world. When I got to the store I was greeted by an overly enthusiastic member of staff who couldn’t wait to sell me the next newest and unreliable product they’d cooked up. I politely explained that I was there (reluctantly may I add) to get my phone battery replaced. I was asked to take a seat at one of the tables in the store near the back of the shop. This was were customers sat whilst managing their tech withdrawals and come downs. As I approached the table of gloom I immediately noticed the atmosphere. Everyone at the table looked lost. No one knew what to do with themselves, and had a genuine look of worry on their faces. I got the impression that those who had begrudgingly parted ways with their phones were scared that they may never see them again. I started to think to myself that this isn’t a shop, this is a tech hospital. This is a waiting area in a busy hospital were your precious hunk of metalic software is rushed to the back room to be revived.

I remember one guy stood out for me in particular. He was waiting for his laptop to be fixed. Oh but no, it didn’t stop there, while he was waiting for baby number one, he was already looking at an upgrade. I’ve always found iphone store employees to be some of the most tactical and lethal sales manipulators out there. I always find if you don’t make eye contact with them, they’ll move on to their next victim swiftly. Well this guy was definitely a target, but also he was vulnerable. He was in a state of despair, they’d caught him and they knew his weakness. “I can’t afford to loose my laptop” he said. The woman had already told him that he was due an upgrade (they timed that perfectly didn’t they) and that as long as he’d saved his work to that big fluffy cloud in the sky, then all would be well.

As she was showing him what he was definitely not missing, I looked over to my right. There were two young girls chatting to another iphone store predator. The girl who was talking to her was saying that this is her second phone. She had 2 iphones (as if one iphone isnt hard enough to manage) to which her friend who was accompanying her asked why she even had 2 phones in the first place. She said she needed them for different things. I can’t imagine really what a girl under 20 would need with 2 phones. But hey that’s another story I guess.

So back to laptop guy, at this point he had fallen into the tech trap. He was already looking at the new and improve upgrade with glee, he’d seemed to have forgotten all about his poor baby in the back fighting for his life. I’m not sure what it was about me, but they were leaving me alone. I preferred it this way, it gave me time to enjoy my favourite pastime of people watching.

The A-star sales woman was reeling off all sorts of crazy jargon and it was working perfectly. He was sold. Just like that. I wondered if he had even realised how easily he had been manipulated in just under 10 minutes.

As I continued to wait for my old, semi-trusty iphone 6s I thought to myself how much I despised shops like this one. The world we live in today is ruled by technology and the modern man is merely just a slave to it. People have become obsessed with the idea of having the latest and greatest gadget. Consumerism and technology go hand in hand. Think of what we could productively spend our time and energy on if we took our focus away from the constant stream of endless products created to entice and distract us.

I’d watched a documentary a while back called minimalism and i have to admit before this i was blinded by the power of consumerism. I’d even recently watched a film called Branded which further exposed the truth. I started to realise that consumerism had become a normalised yet perfectly disguised drug. Both of these visuals placed a heavy emphasis on how we buy things, not because we need them but how they are presented to us. How many iphones or laptop do we need? Do we need to upgrade? How many items of clothing in our wardrobes do we really wear? Do we still wear every item?

When we base our life status on what we own rather than what we do with our lives and what we represent, then we are missing the point. Life is to be lived not bought. You can’t buy memories, they will stay with you. Your tech and designer bag will go out fashion, but your memories and experiences never will. Be wise with how you spend your time.