As part of this week’s paging special report, RCR explores people’s love-hate relationship with technology. It’s an interesting read, and it certainly has caused me to wonder if the wireless industry is shifting from a time when it was perceived solely in a positive light to a time when it could be seen negatively.
“Since the industrial revolution, people have been asking whether technology is our mechanical slave, or are we a slave to it?” said Carroll Pursell, chair of the Department of History at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, professor of history of technology and science, and author of “White Heat”-a companion text to the BBC series “Machines in America.”
Wearing a pager used to mean you were important, indispensable. Later it meant you were on call (still indispensable but carrying more of a negative connotation.) Today, paging has permeated the preteen and teen market, where it is perceived as cool. (In fact, some of the pagers I’ve played with have been pretty cool.)
Cellular phones traditionally have conveyed status and power. They are, in effect, cool. People love their phones.
Or do they?
Is the TV commercial featuring a man who throws his wireless phone in the trash so he can get back to basics (albeit in a $40,000 sports utility vehicle) the beginning of a mind change?
Is the tool of choice in the ’80s becoming something to be rejected as we head toward a new millennium in a society where people more and more seem to be choosing simplicity over acquiring more “things?”
Is it more superficial than that, and the reality is that once everyone can afford to have a wireless phone, it loses some of its prestige?
Does cool even matter?
No doubt. How is the galoshes industry doing? Galoshes-those rubber boots that easily go over your shoes to keep them dry on rainy days-are handy. No need to carry an extra set of shoes, no need to avoid water puddles. But how many people do you know that wear galoshes? They’re not cool, even though they’re useful.
The AT&T commercial about the kids who wish they were clients of their mom’s certainly has won the approval of working families. It exemplifies the positives of wireless-the freedom it offers on days you need to balance your business and personal obligations.
Am I suggesting wireless is going to become extinct? No, not hardly. People do love their phones.
Perhaps the industry just needs to remind them it’s OK to turn them off once in a while.
