Tag: Smartphone

Distress Sail!

Apparently, there is ” Wisdom of the Crowds “..” A Collective Bias “.

 

Though not sure with wisdom and bias– can the twain meet?

 

Since decades, marketers and politicians have been working to exaggerate cultural distress, a hack on our emotions.

 

Mind you, it’s not about the emotional distress of not having a roof, or not being able to care for your kids or deal with trauma..
..but the manufactured cultural distress of ‘ modern advanced societies ‘.
Like the invented shame of not having the latest smartphone or a new suit for the party..
It’s the dissatisfaction of knowing that something ‘better’ is available, and the invented discontent that comes from the peer pressure of being left out or left behind.
A vocabulary called FOMO(Fear of Missing Out) – like the social shame of not having enough presence on social media..
or the FOMO that watching other people presenting nothing but happiness online can create..
Fear of this sort of cultural distress pushes us to simply spend money to avoid it..Making a budget is hard, paying for not making one is easy.
It turns out that selling an easy and convenient way to avoid social pain is a nearly boundless formula for corporate growth..
We humans are always going to find moments of cultural distress, and it’s up to each of us to decide what to trade (in the short run and the long run) to deal with it.
Perhaps it makes sense simply to acknowledge that it’s present. That would be a good starting point, isn’t it?
People like us do things like this..ready, steady..set sail!

Tenancy Violations!

Of Tenants & Landlords!

NOTICE: Your tenancy can expire any time!

Just a bit about the striking harbinger of a shift- our wholesale tilt towards becoming a tenant society. Today we may have the mistaken notion that we own things because we paid for them(through the nose or credit card go figure out) and brought them home, but as long as they run software or have digital connectivity, the sellers continue to have control over the product. The hunter becomes the hunted (or in this case the landlord becomes the tenant or should it be the renter becomes the rented…)- we are renters of our own objects, there by the grace of the ‘true owner’.

Older batteries, ageing phones and the ever so gentle nudge to buy the new smartphone…we all go through it.

We seem to have fewer rights as digital tenants than we do as tenants of real estate(where eviction is subject to due process and both sides have a voice and a choice).

How long before our devices start behaving like spies and taskmasters in our own (smart) home? Connectivity and embedded intelligence are at the fulcrum of push and control that large corporations exercise over us on their path to bigger margins and greater profits.

For all the tenancy rights violation, we just may be at the tip of some tenancy riots. So the next time you purchase something, ask ‘ Is it yours truly ? ‘.

Yours Truly!

Generation Text!

I had enough (considerate) people taking me for a ride, and since change, as they say is the only constant, decided to take myself for a ride.I thought it would be appropriately urban of me to add to the ridership of the Metro.

The train was crowded but I was lucky to get a seat. It didn’t take me too long to realise that I was the only person in the compartment reading a book rather than starting at a device and a small screen- a striking singularity that should have provided enough material evidence about where I fit in demographically these days..but then, I have always tempted fate!

The teenager sitting opposite me was texting away furiously with blinding speed(now I know the typos and the passionate need for being grammatically incorrect).Probably he had a train to catch??

Autumn had made its seasonal fall but with an unusual warmth- so a lot of people in the compartment wore half sleeves- and it didn’t take too long for me to realise that most of them didn’t wear a wristwatch. In a digitell (or digital) era, I suppose, analogue watches and clocks are no longer part of the dialogue. So the next time you instruct your millennial kid ‘ turn it clockwise or anti clockwise ‘, you will know exactly why wiser counsel may have to prevail. So watch it!

As I disembarked on reaching downtown, what I was not up for was to think ‘ Are we riders of the lost arc? ‘ Time will tell..

ENDS

www.brandknewmag.com

www.groupisd.com