Drink the kool aid**
10:43AM, Friday, August 3.
Back on the bus now, having just finished left our tour at Samsung. I can conceive a scenario in which I’d have enjoyed the Samsung tour: observing a production line, or walking through the RD department, along perhaps with a lecture by a company expert, predicting where the tech sector is headed over the next decade or so.
Instead we were subjected to an hour-long propaganda tour that celebrated all products Samsung. First came the eight-minute commercial, in which Samsung promised to bring world peace and happiness (I jest not). Then the next fifty minutes or so were spent on a guided stroll of Samsung cutting-edge products, few of which will ever be affordable for teachers (e.g., 80” plasma and LCD screens, refrigerators that do everything short of cooking one’s food and setting the table, washer/dryer combos that also dry-clean, etc), and none of which, studies have proven, will increase one’s happiness.
It’s not that I’m a Luddite; on the contrary, I’ve been dubbed a power user by no less an authority than systems administrator extraordinaire SWT. But I resist commercial manipulations and bragging, and that’s all this was – “bow before the great god of technology and his chief emissary on earth, Samsung.
Not, mind you, that most of my accompanying teachers minded. Frequent exclamations of delight and awe surrounded me, accompanied by covetous mumblings. Evidently most of my fellow travelers remain woefully ignorant of the hedonic treadmill. I tried to explain to some of them that such innovations don’t produce an overall gain in individual or communal happiness, but for some reason my arguments – indubitably told with sensitive compassion rather than harshly barked out between gritted teeth and folded arms – fell short.
Alas, the pathway of truth can be a lonely one…
**
next post
Back on the bus now, having just finished left our tour at Samsung. I can conceive a scenario in which I’d have enjoyed the Samsung tour: observing a production line, or walking through the RD department, along perhaps with a lecture by a company expert, predicting where the tech sector is headed over the next decade or so.
Instead we were subjected to an hour-long propaganda tour that celebrated all products Samsung. First came the eight-minute commercial, in which Samsung promised to bring world peace and happiness (I jest not). Then the next fifty minutes or so were spent on a guided stroll of Samsung cutting-edge products, few of which will ever be affordable for teachers (e.g., 80” plasma and LCD screens, refrigerators that do everything short of cooking one’s food and setting the table, washer/dryer combos that also dry-clean, etc), and none of which, studies have proven, will increase one’s happiness.
It’s not that I’m a Luddite; on the contrary, I’ve been dubbed a power user by no less an authority than systems administrator extraordinaire SWT. But I resist commercial manipulations and bragging, and that’s all this was – “bow before the great god of technology and his chief emissary on earth, Samsung.
Not, mind you, that most of my accompanying teachers minded. Frequent exclamations of delight and awe surrounded me, accompanied by covetous mumblings. Evidently most of my fellow travelers remain woefully ignorant of the hedonic treadmill. I tried to explain to some of them that such innovations don’t produce an overall gain in individual or communal happiness, but for some reason my arguments – indubitably told with sensitive compassion rather than harshly barked out between gritted teeth and folded arms – fell short.
Alas, the pathway of truth can be a lonely one…
**
next post
posted by Cowells at 4:07 PM
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