Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
I'm a bit of a gadgets junkie. Not a first adopter, but definitely an early adopter. I had one of those hand-held scanners way before I could afford one. Stylus tablets, Palm Pilots, CD burner when 4x recording was aMAZing. I've had two digital cameras and am really interested in Canon's new EOS Rebel Digital camera—a 6.1 megapixel SLR that's fully compatability with their autofocus lenses and all the capabilities of their film cameras. It's at a price a truly obsessive hobby photographer, such as I once was, would consider. But I used this stuff.
Maybe if I relate it to software I'd feel less annoyed at these folks.
Nah. I never bought what I didn't have a need for. Though I'll download an open source library in a heartbeat. Anyway…
Adam Lipson cannot decide which of the many gadgets he bought in the last couple of years proved most useless.
Perhaps it was the microscope that hooked up to his computer. Then again, maybe Mr. Lipson, 42, would choose the universal remote control that came with a manual as thick as a Russian novel. But that would be shortchanging the Webcam -- a video camera that transfers images over the Internet -- that he used once, stashed in a closet and finally threw away.
Mr. Lipson, who runs a computer security consulting company in Pearl River, N.Y., is but one of many shoppers who have bought electronic devices lately that end up stuffed into a bottom drawer, on the high shelf of a closet, or in the back of a garage. The lucky ones manage to unload them to somebody else through eBay, which is full of offers these days for "barely used" products or items still "new in box," a term that has become so common it is often shortened to "NIB."
Gadgets bought and barely used are the technology world's equivalent of exercise equipment. Often purchased in a well-intentioned bout of self-improvement, they are opened, used once or twice, then abandoned. Sometimes they never make it out of the box.
…Jonathan Chatham, 23, a mortgage broker in San Antonio, may have carried that point to an extreme. Before a trip to Russia with a church group, he spent $3,000 on a video camera with the idea of making a documentary about "The New Russians," as he describes it, and thereby start himself on a new career as a filmmaker. But no one seemed particularly interested in providing financial backing for his project.
"I thought all I had to do was buy the camera and everyone would be throwing these opportunities at me," he said.
Like other serial acquirers, Mr. Chatham is surprisingly introspective. "There's the theoretical life you live and the actual life you live," he said. He was hoping the camera would bridge the gap between theory and reality.
[P6: here comes the part I don't understand]
Mr. Chatham blames himself, but only in part. He also blames advertisers for persuading him of the transformative powers of the latest gear.
"The way it's advertised is that if I just buy it," he said, "all these other things will fall into place in my life."
sigh
I have to put together a screed about advertising and suckers. None of this crap would work if people didn't go into shut-off-your-consciousness-and-absorb mode when sitting in front of the TV.
Posted by P6 at October 15, 2003 06:03 AM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1983On the flip side are the people who sue a manufacturer for their own mistakes when using a product, thus inspiring warning labels such as "do not submerse while using" on power tools.
Then again, the bright side is they do give us something to blog about - at least while they're alive. Which is an amazingly long time.
But there is another possibility. It's purely speculative but suppose this fellow made up the story about the ads & film career to cover up his finding out how difficult it is to start a pay-for-porn web site featuring live models?
I don't kno how that's a flip side because I don't understand them either.
As for the speculative possibility, it's really unlikely that the guy would get himself into a national newspaper to lie about something no one would know about. But you must carry around a interesting set of concepts for that to occur to you.
it's a flip side in the sense that one person blames the manufacturer for making him buy a product & another person blames the manufacturer for making him misuse a product. They're similar but occur at opposite ends of the consumer chain - one pre-purchase & post-purchase.
& I know it's unlikely that my speculation is correct. Some people always assume the worst about people. I think it's funnier if you assume the most embarrassing about people. :)