All posts by dlamb4@gsu.edu

Deconstructing a Shining Totem of the American Experience

The artifact appears as a soft rectangular solid of black, silver, and grey- cast in aluminum, glass, and hard plastic.  The body of the object is covered in a shell of light blue rubber and hard, medium-blue plastic, measuring 2.31 inches wide, and weighing 4.9 ounces.  Its depth measures 0.37 inches, and the object is 4.5 inches tall.

On the front mirror black surface of the object, near the bottom, there appears a slightly recessed circle, perhaps a button, with a white square inscribed on the center, measuring no more than a half-centimeter or so on each side.  Near the top of the façade there is a rectangular shaped recession, with grey mesh at its base.  Adjacent to the grey mesh, sits a tiny circular lens.  On the east vertical side of the artifact, there are what appear to be two buttons, labeled “+” and “-”, and a switch which can be shifted upward or downward.  When shifted downward, the switch reveals an orange rectangle of color above it.

The west vertical side of the object remains flush, lacking any modifying attributes.  The south vertical side features two small grey mesh ovals, two tiny screws, and an opening shaped like a rectangle, which appears to be an electronic female plug.  The north vertical side features one oval shaped button and one circular opening which also appears to be a female electrical port of some variety.

Removing the plastic and rubber coverings and directing attention to the back of the object, one discovers what appears to be a tiny camera embedded into the top left corner with an accompanying flash, an image of a silver apple with a bite missing, and the following inscription on the back of the object:

“iPhone…Designed by Apple in California…Assembled in China…Model A1387…EMC 2430…FCC ID: BCG-E2430A… IC: 579C-E2430A.

Engaging with the object yields the discovery that this rectangular solid is in fact an interactive electronic device, likely to be used for communication, given the inscription on the rear, “iPhone.”  Pressing the oval button on the north vertical side activates the front black-mirrored glass to reveal the date and time, a directive at the bottom, “slide to unlock,” two small digital oval buttons at center top and center bottom, and a camera icon in the bottom-right corner of the space.

The device “awakens” by touching the fingers upon the face to manipulate the device.  Sliding down the top oval digital button reveals a brief weather report and the date:

“Saturday November 8th… Partly cloudy currently.  The high will be 61 degrees.  Partly cloudy tonight with a low of 43 degrees… Calendar.”

Sliding up the bottom oval digital button reveals a menu of buttons:

An airplane, a WiFi symbol, a Bluetooth symbol, a moon symbol, and a symbol with a lock circumscribed by a curved arrow.

Below these buttons is a sliding scale brightness control, with a sun emitting small rays on the left side and a sun emitting larger rays to its right.  Beneath that bar lies a sliding scale controlling volume: a spectrum bookended by a speaker symbol on the left, and a speaker symbol on the right, emitting sound waves.  At the bottom of the screen, 4 more buttons appear, revealing the tools they represent: a flashlight, a clock, a calculator, and a clock.

At the top of the screen, a status bar sits, indicating the level of connectivity, the service provider’s name, Virgin, and the form of service connectivity, 3G.  To the right of this information, a tiny alarm clock, a faded Bluetooth symbol, the figure 75%, and a battery-shaped icon (the battery being ¾ full) appear queued.

With the face of the iPhone unlocked, the screen features several squares that, when pressed, reveal applications which the device can operate:

Contacts, Notes, Weather, Wells Fargo, Calculator, Maps, Podcasts, Spotify, Music, Clock, Settings, and Safari.

At the bottom of the screen, a secondary row of applications is anchored at the base:

Phone, Messages, Calendar, and Gmail.

Two circles, one white and one grey, appear above the bottom row. Swiping the finger to the right on the first screen reveals a second screen with similar applications to the first screen.

The following set of images will show the reader some perspectives considered during the writing process.  These images composed a portion of an iPhone 3-D modeling draft.

 

Having focused on the physical attributes and the functions of the object, we can move from description and speculation to deduce that this object is indeed a version the Apple iPhone, a smartphone manufactured sometime after October 2011, making the device an expression of, more or less, present day culture.

 

Here’s Apple’s Trailer for the iPhone 4s.

 

Taking Prown’s object metaphors into consideration, the attributive description of the iPhone is smooth, shiny, hard, opaque, light, thin, and clean.  Apple’s design seeks to draw out creativity and style, affirming life, enhancing productivity, and creating an atmosphere of “cool.”  “Cool ” as a concept implies exclusivity; Dr. Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, a philosophy professor in Kuwait writing for Philosophy Now says, in his article about cool, “the aesthetics and ethics of cool fractures and alienates in order to bring forward unusual constellations of ideas and actions. In a phrase: the cool person lives in a constant state of alienation.”

The minimalistic design resists a loud projection of metaphor like Prown’s teapot: almost no one could call an iPhone “grandmotherly” or “comforting.”  I have noticed in my own work, the analogy of the smartphone as a parasite.  As a bartender, I’ve observed friends and couples out to lunch or dinner together.  At some point, the conversations diminish, and I see the people drift away into the illumined faces of their devices.  The objects that were designed to foster creativity and ease of communication seem to have created a precipitate and inverse reaction in the user: a sense of distraction and alienation.  I may be making a generalization based on my cursory observations in the workplace, but I believe this example to be an object lesson, illustrative of a trend in culture towards a compulsive relationship to mobile devices and the Internet.  As pendulums are wont to do, they swing between polarities, and I believe we’ve seen the extremity of over involvement with our gadgets, that over involvement being the causal event for the age of loneliness.

The muted features of the iPhone- the rounded sides, the relatively light and thin body, suggest that the object should seamlessly assimilate into a person’s life.  Furthermore, the sleekness and lack of moving parts indicates that the object would basically be invisible.  One could leave it in a pocket or bag and forget about it, thus allowing the iPhone to almost become part of the body.

Russell Belk  states in his article, “The Extended Self in the Digital World”, “The Internet and many digital devices free us from the constraints of time and place and create other, virtual, times and places.”  While the devices have their own kind of “intelligence,” the effect they have on their owners is profound.  The sharing and social media components of smartphone technology also have implications on the extended self.  Belk states, “many new possessions and technologies…create different ways through which we can meet, interact with, and extend our aggregate selves through other people while experiencing a transcendent sense that we are part of something bigger than us alone (Belk 494).   The desire to connect with other people is part of human nature.  The social media juggernaut Facebook, much like corporate radio, have realized what Matt Silverman records in his interview with author Douglas Rushkoff: “the people paying are marketers. That makes them the customers. And it means [users] are the product being delivered to those customers.”

As technology trends further towards ubiquity, mobile technology shrinks in size, increases in multi-functionality, and becomes easier to come by.  Service providers offer free phones and free upgrades that accompany contracts and contract renewals.  A compulsive relationship to technology and media seems to evoke the words of Marx recorded in Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project:

“All the physical and intellectual senses…have been replaced by the simple alienation of all the senses, the sense of having.”

This concept of alienation is especially interesting considering Belk’s ideas of the extended self.   Belk’s ideas about virtual brand communities draw an interesting corollary:  Belk states that normally, aggregating one’s sense of self with branded goods usually requires ownership; in the digital world, this aggregation can happen in virtual environment in which the user or consumer can engage brands without having to invest capital, creating a virtual sense of affiliated identity.  The iPhone bridges the gap between physical and digital possession- one can physically possess an iPhone and then digitally possess all sorts of content.

This idea of the iPhone diverges wholly from older concepts of the telephone in many ways- early phones existed as stationary objects, mounted to a wall and hard-wired into the circuitry inside a building, making the object much less personalized.  The evolution of technology from early telephone concepts leading up to the moment in time represented by this object shows a reshaping of the form and the role of the telephone in culture.  The major shift is that of purpose: the telephone was a device for communication.  Early cellular telephones, car phones, and pagers were devices made to enable interpersonal communication.  While the smartphone is a device for communication, it is also a device for entertainment, advertisement, shopping, and distraction.  The iPhone is a type of status symbol, unto itself.  There are those who have iPhone and those who do not have iPhones.  The values of the Apple Company imply creativity, business savvy, and an admission into a type of status of cool  in the products they sell, creating a binary dynamism between those who buy-in to the Apple lifestyle and those who do not.

On the other hand, the iPhone is a valuable tool.  It synthesizes the functionality of many other tools, thus allowing users to having a myriad of options available to them at the press of a button.  There is nothing inherently wrong with innovation.  The success of the modern age stems from innovation­– the average human life expectancy has increased with the innovations of the last two hundred years.  Science and technology offer the promise of a better life and a more informed population.

The ecological aspect of understanding the iPhone should also be considered as a part of studying the cultural impact and heritage of this object. Looking at the concept of ecological foot printing with respect to this object, one can learn a lot about what kind of effect it has on the planet and its people.  Writer and engineer Jim Merkel writes in his book, Radical Simplicity about the call for examining patterns of consumption and looking at how the individual impacts the global community with his or her consumption habits.  Merkel uses some mathematical concepts to determine the bioproductive area of the planet, subtracting areas that cannot produce vegetation and areas covered by water or development.  With a figure of 6.7 billion humans, the bioproductive area allotted for each would be 4.7 acres.  Those people earning higher than $100,000 annually use more than 60 acres of bioproductive space annually (Merkel 81-84).  Merkel suggests that the solution to the planetary issues of over consumption and widespread income discrepancies would be to consume less, and generate less capital (Merkel 52).  Such a concept suggests a radical shift in socioeconomic ideology.

The culture of Apple and the sensationalism surrounding the iPhone brand calls into question the binaries produced from a sense of having and not having. Examining these binaries could look towards a Marxist critique examining the relationships between producer and consumer and the labor value represented by the object.  This evokes that masking of how and by whom an object came to be under a social value of the object in question: people want the iPhone, but, oftentimes, they don’t know how or by whom the iPhone was made.  Part of this snapshot of history the iPhone 4s offers is a look at the structural issues inherent in the high demand for smartphone technology.  Art and culture have begun responding to the economic and social ramifications of the technology.

“Ruined” by Lynn Nottage, a play about the violent situation in the Congo, partially brought upon by the mining of a rare-earth mineral, Coltan discusses issues that are precipitate to an increased demand for mobile technology.  Coltan is refined into a powder and used in cellphone technology to keep devices from getting too hot.

Image by Dizolele. Coltan Mining.

Coltan is a key ingredient in the fabrication of iPhone circuit boards.

Nottage’s work connects the sexual violence perpetrated against women in the Congo as a precipitate of these internal social and political conflicts, which arose in part, to the rising demand for cellphones to be manufactured and sold in the western world.

The aim of a material culture analysis of any object should illuminate revelations about the culture that produced said object. The culture of American iPhone users is but only one aspect of the greater picture, as iPhone labor is outsourced, therefore globalizing the artifact.  In order to get a clearer picture, it is important to examine the world of those involved in the manufacturing process as well as that of the end users. The situation of the laborers creating Apple products has been something under scrutiny in recent years.  At the Chinese plant, Foxconn, journalists have exposed sweatshop conditions.  An outbreak of suicides in the Foxconn plant, which produces some of Apple’s products, deepens the concern over the human cost of manufacturing luxury items. These disturbing facts have a contradictory and interrupting effect when taken into view along with the aesthetics of the brand: a paradox between a projected image and a gritty reality.

 

From Daily Mail. Workers’ quarters at Foxconn.
From China Divide.  Workers at the Foxconn Plant where Apple products are made.

Juxtaposing the images of violence to the images of sensational consumerism raise an eyebrow to the notions of ethical consumption.  How can today’s modern consumer , whose identity to some degree, has been acculturated into the use of these kinds of technology, move forward and make decisions about their own consumption– by understanding that purchasing any object supports and reinforces the existing relationships being negotiated among: the planet’s resources, the laborer who helped to produce the goods, the facility which produces the object, the parent company, the industry that transports the goods, and the retailers who sell the objects.  Even if one does not agree with a Marxist critique of capitalist consumption, it is possible to take into consideration that, working within the system, one can make an informed effort to purchase ethically sourced objects with an understanding that many of the structural issues that underlie the situation will only change at a glacial pace.

Staring at the muted lines of aluminum, glass and hard plastic, one begins to drift.  So much progress, theory, branding, marketing, research, blood, coal, steam, man hours, industrial processes, fire, iron, despair, hope, innovation, and synergy all play into the formation of something that tries so hard to be invisible.  The fact of life for many Americans in 2014 is that smartphone technology is second nature.  Most people would never consider giving up the convenience of the mobile phone.  Many of our jobs require them.  Family life evolves and we need these objects to navigate many aspects of relationship.  Our relationship with technology, however, is worthy of consideration:  how many hours per day, per week is enough?  The beauty and simplicity of the minimalist design obfuscates the reality behind the iPhone.

The culture that produced the iPhone reveals some of the paradoxes of the human experience: luxury juxtaposed next to poverty.  Wealthy Americans sleep in cardboard boxes, by choice, camped out to buy the latest iteration of a new product– poor, disenfranchised people in America and abroad sleep on the ground or on a cold hard floor out of necessity, and maybe never get enough capital to afford a smartphone.  The paradox of alienation- a product designed to make life easier and relationships more accessible leads many users to a lonely place.  The price tag of $0 for the free upgrade on a cell contract with a major provider doesn’t reflect the human and environmental cost of production of the object.

Consider the blank faces of couples dining, absorbed by artificial light.

Author’s Note:

Bringing into the associative notions of business ethics, ecology, violence, philosophy, and pop culture conjures an image of the iPhone that I hadn’t really understood before now.  Although the piece might arouse some strong emotions, the work is meant to be an object lesson about material culture, not merely a counter industrial polemic.  That might be the biggest concern I have for the work as a whole.  My next thought about this whole web of relationships is this: the iPhone is just one of millions of items produced in this contemporary industrial consumer market.  I synthesized some ideas some on one little corner of this bigger situation.  I don’t mean to vilify Apple, but merely to show something about the culture that produced the artifact.

References

Barboza, David and Charles Duhigg. “In China, Human Costs are built into an iPad.”  The New York Times. 25 January 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all& Web.  03 December 2014.

Belk, Russell W.  “Extended Self in a Digital World.” Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 40, No. 3 (October 2013), pp.477-500.  The University of Chicago Press.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/671052.  02 October 2014. Web.

Benjamin, Walter.  “The Collector.” The Arcades Project.  Harvard University Press.  1999. Print.

iPhone 4s Tech Specs.  Apple.com.  Apple. http://www.apple.com/lae/iphone-4s/specs/ . 02 October 2014. Web.

“iOS 8.” Apple.com.  Apple.  http://www.apple.com/ios/.  02 October 2014. Web.

Merkel, Jim. Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth. Canada: New Society Publishers.    2003.

Prown, David Jules.  Fact or Fiction.  History from Things: Essays on Material Culture. Eds Lubar Steven, and Kingery, W. David.  Smithsonian Institution Press.  Washington. 1993. Print.

Silverman, Matt. “Users For Sale: Has Digital Illiteracy Turned Us Into Social Commodities?”  Mashable.  30 June 2011. http://mashable.com/2011/06/30/users-products-rushkoff/ 02 October 2014. Web.

 

Blog 9- Prownian Description of iPhone 4s

An object appears as a soft rectangular solid of black, silver, and grey- cast in aluminum, glass, and hard plastic.  The body of the object is covered in a shell of light blue rubber and hard, medium-blue plastic.  The plastic shell bears the inscription “Otter Box.”

 

The object measures 2.31 inches wide.  The object weighs 4.9 ounces.  Its depth measures 0.37 inches, and its height spans 4.5 inches.

 

On the front of the object appears a slightly recessed circle, with a white square inscribed in the center, measuring no more than a half-centimeter or so on each side.  There is a rectangular shaped recession near the top of the façade, with grey mesh at its base.  Adjacent to the grey mesh, appears a tiny circular lens.  On the verso side of the object (the vertical verso), there are two buttons, labeled “+” and “-“, and a switch which can be shifted upward or downward.  When shifted downward, the switch reveals an orange rectangle of color above it. The right/recto vertical side of the object remains flush, featuring no modifying switches or buttons.  The bottom vertical side features two small grey mesh ovals, two tiny screws, and an opening shaped like a rectangle, which appears to be an electronic female plug.  The top vertical side features one oval shaped button and one circular opening which also appears to be a female electrical port of some variety.

 

Removing the plastic and rubber coverings and directing attention to the back of the object, one discovers what appears to be a tiny camera embedded into the top left corner with an accompanying flash, an image of a silver apple with a bite missing, and the following inscription on the back of the object: “iPhone…Designed by Apple in California…Assembled in China…Model A1387…EMC 2430…FCC ID: BCG-E2430A… IC:579C-E2430A.  Below the inscription are inscribed a series of symbols: the first appears to be FCC, with the C’s etched concentrically. The next symbol is a trashcan that’s been drawn through with an “X,” followed by a type of “C,” a type of “E,” 0682, and two concentric circles containing the symbol “!”

 

Engaging with the object yields the discovery that this rectangular solid is in fact an interactive electronic device, likely to be used for communication, given the inscription on the rear, “iPhone.”  Pressing the oval button on the top vertical side activates the front black-mirrored glass to reveal the date and time, a directive at the bottom, “slide to unlock,” two small digital oval buttons at center top and center bottom, and a camera icon in the bottom-right corner of the space.  The device is operated by touching the fingers upon the face to manipulate the device.  Sliding down the top oval digital button reveals a brief weather report and the date: “Saturday November 8th… Partly cloudy currently.  The high will be 61 degrees.  Partly cloudy tonight with a low of 43 degrees… Calendar.”  Sliding up the bottom oval digital button reveals a menu of buttons: an airplane, a WiFi symbol, a Bluetooth symbol, a moon symbol, and a symbol with a lock circumscribed by a curved arrow.  Below these buttons is a sliding scale brightness control, with a sun emitting small rays on the left side and a sun emitting larger rays to its right.  Below that bar lies a sliding scale controlling volume: a spectrum bookended by a speaker symbol on the left, and a speaker symbol on the right, emitting sound waves.  At the bottom of the screen, 4 more buttons appear, revealing the tools they represent: a flashlight, a clock, a calculator, and a clock.

 

At the top of the screen, a status bar sits, indicating the level of connectivity, the service provider’s name, Virgin, and the type of service connected, 3G.  To the right of this information, a tiny alarm clock, a faded Bluetooth symbol, the figure 75%, and a battery-shaped icon (the battery being ¾ full) are lined up.

 

With the face of the iPhone unlocked, the screen features several squares that, when pressed, reveal applications which the device can operate: contacts, notes, weather, Wells Fargo, calculator, maps, podcasts, Spotify, music, clock, settings, and Safari.  At the bottom of the screen, a secondary row of applications is anchored at the base: phone, messages, calendar, and Gmail.  Two circles, one white and one grey, appear above the bottom row. Swiping the finger to the right on the first screen reveals a second screen with similar applications to the first screen.

 

Having completed a basic description, we find that the object of study is a highly portable and ergonomic tiny computer and a phone, capable of functioning in a multitude of fashions.  A brief search into the objects history yielded that it debuted in the marketplace on October 4, 2011, dating the object to being no more than 3 years old.

 

 

Blog 8: An Attitude of Gratitude

I have a habit of fetishizing paper goods and writing utensils, hoarding books, and keeping a messy office.  I’m given to obsession, and guitars have been a big part of that.  I used to spend hours pouring over magazines and catalogues, wandering through guitar stores, and taking trips to other towns that had different guitar stores.

 

Guitars have talismanic aesthetics– the iconography of rock n’ roll, the “cover of Rolling Stone,” is almost catholic in its beauty.  They are tools, art objects, and symbols of sexual power.

Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster, via Dave’s Guitar

For the majority of my life, for the last 17 or so years, I’ve pursued guitar.  I’ve owned several different guitars over the years.  I’ve made a practice of pairing down the quantity of things I hold onto, and I’ve made a ritual of gifting the occasional guitar to a friend.

 

The act of giving things away has become a big part of my consumption cycle.  When my wife and I moved from Tucker to Poncey-Highlands, we took 3 or 4 carloads of things and donated them.  We did the same thing when we moved out of that apartment– I try to give away as much as I collect.  I’ve given away or donated 6 guitars.  Now, I own 2 guitars and a banjo.  Two were gifts to me, and one I purchased using layaway.  I really appreciated the item I had to buy using layaway– this happened during a financially weak period of my life; it took me three months to save the $350 to buy it.  The guitar is a Seagull acoustic, made in Canada.  There’s nothing really special about the item, but I would never sell it.

 

I agree with Alex’s post that categorizes objects as culturally positive, enhancing memory and providing a grounding effect to the individual.  Much of my writing this semester has explored the alienation of the self that comes through possession.  My personal relationship with this object reminds me of a time in my own life when I made sacrifices to obtain something that I felt was a worthwhile endeavor– much of the day-to-day consumption in my life has little connection to that very mindful act of buying a guitar.  Do I care if I spend too much money on coffee? These little daily acts of consumption serve a foil contrasting against the awareness of mindful collecting.

 

Lately, I read articles on minimalism.  I don’t want my objects to own me.  I want my extended self to find utility and not alienation.  My patterns of consuming are evolving.  This semester has been a challenge point in my personal growth, and I’ve begun questioning consumption on a greater scale.  There are certainly risks and rewards to consumption.  Having the necessary tools and goods for survival in a modern world is an essential of life.  Having every wanton desire fulfilled is not essential.  In fact, having every desire fulfilled is potentially dangerous.

A study of lottery winners observed that winning the lottery and magically being financially unencumbered didn’t make people any happier.  Cultivating contentment yields better results than chasing gratification– this is my motto towards consumption today.

Brands: A Brief History

Branding itself impacts life on a day-to-day basis.  Taking time to read a little more about the history of brands, what the word actually means, and the trajectories of these two companies, and some of the studies on branding will give one a deepened appreciate for the complex nature of the relationship between the person and the object.

The following is a brief look at the prehistory, genesis, and evolution of branding, with a particular focus on two local Georgia brands: Coca Cola and Delta.

This timeline focuses on advertising and the history of the brand concept with an eye toward modern day.

Through the object study of Delta and Coca Cola’s brands and considering a portion of their history, the relationship between brands and culture seems direct and responsive.  Coca-Cola and Delta are both local and global brands­– these companies impact life on a global scale.  According to Delta.com, Delta serves over 165 million customers per year.  Coke claims that their products are consumed at the rate of 1.8 billion units per day.  That’s a lot of Coke!

Brands respond to and even possess the power to shape culture. Companies today are embracing the evolution of culture in the digital age, with the concerns of societal consciousness at the forefront of their current marketing strategies.  The in-roads between brands, philosophy, and psychology serve as mile markers on a wider study of the material culture of contemporary American life.

Meta Things

Vetta Collection

So, now, the “age of loneliness” is a thing.

What does this have to do with material culture and, for my concern, the study of brands?  How did we get here?

The technology of the marketing industry is accelerating quickly.

Jennifer Roberts ties into culture theorist McLuhan’s ideas about technocracy in her essay on the lava lamp.  The 1960’s, before the age of ubiquitous technology and advertising, are the setting in which McLuhan “began describing the dehierarchized, free flowing world of information that sophisticated communications technologies were enabling” (Roberts 175).  This sounds a lot like the evolved state of information and technology at present day.

The notion of a free flowing world of information has come to be a given in the culture of the “twenty-tens.”

If social media and the inundation of information into people’s lives has a hand in creating this age of loneliness, it would be good to take a look at why people are so attracted to sharing and using social media:

According to Harvard researchers, “Self-disclosure was strongly associated with increased activation in brain regions that form the mesolimbic dopamine system,” so, it makes us feel good!  That’s a no-brainer (pun intended).  But it also makes us feel bad.  The same research shows that young people who use social media exhibit high-risk behaviors at an accelerated rate.

A compulsive relationship to technology and media seems to evoke the words of Marx recorded in Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project:

“All the physical and intellectual senses…have been replaced by the simple alienation of all the senses, the sense of having.”

 This concept of alienation is especially interesting considering Belk’s ideas of the extended self.   Belk’s ideas about virtual brand communities draw an interesting corollary:

Belk states that normally, aggregating one’s sense of self with branded goods usually requires ownership; in the digital world, this aggregation can happen in virtual environment in which the user or consumer can engage brands without having to invest capital, creating a virtual sense of affiliated identity.

When I go out and buy a MacBook at the Apple store, I am buying into the cultural mythology of what Apple offers.  If I log in to a website like Pinterest, I can curate all of these interests, and, in a sense, possess them in the digital sense by saving images to my page and creating boards of the things that I like and endorse.  Pinterest could surely be responsible for helping brands establish new markets and sell more goods.  What happens when virtual appreciation becomes a true craving, the consumer now convinced he/she needs to buy the object to assimilate it into his/her identity, once the sense of wanting overcomes the sense of appreciation?

Here, I reach the crossroads: Belk and Marx present related, but contrasting points of view- does having enhance or alienate the self?  I tend to think it’s a paradox– both things are happening in real time– the multifaceted existential concepts of self (Sartre via Kinneavy) could, at once, be at odds with one another within the individual, creating a sense of an enlarged and alienated self.

Dr. Newby-Clark Self-Other Perceptions

What does all of this have to do with brands?

SIRI, you complete me.

 

A pretext to the iPhone

Apple– they’ve made a name for themselves, selling simply designed and visually striking smart technology.  The new operating system for Apple mobile devices, iOS 8 with SIRI, aims to take intelligent mobile technology to a very personal level.

Copy from the iOS 8 site points out that the product will help “you do the everyday things, and the not-so-everyday things, in ways that are intuitive, simple, and fun. And it’s loaded with useful features you’ll wonder how you ever did without.”

I will wonder, “How did I ever live without you, iPhone.”  That’s a bold claim.

Apple creates a buzz around their products that underscores this sentiment.

 

 

Russell Belk states in his article, The Extended Self in the Digital World, “The Internet and many digital devices free us from the constraints of time and place and create other, virtual, times and places.”  While the devices have their own kind of “intelligence,” the effect they have on their owners is profound­.

The Apple copy regarding SIRI, the AI function on the iPhone and iPad is particularly interesting, claiming that SIRI “understands what you say.  It knows what you mean.”  The latter part of the clause goes beyond simply translating voice-to-text, to a place of near-sentience.  The subtext of the language on the Apple website suggests that an iPhone can be like a personal assistant, something not too far away from a human helper, a human companion that can do lots of things.

The iPhone (or any similar technology) has agency, contributing to a furthering of extended self that bleeds deep into the world of the digital.  While many of our possessions that have temporal physical features, many of our possessions today come in a digital format: music, pictures, records and important documents, contact lists, personal journals, bookmarked websites, research logs, and more.

An iPhone is like a portal to these virtual possessions.

The sharing and social media components of smartphone technology also have implications on the extended self.  Belk states, “many new possessions and technologies…create different ways through which we can meet, interact with, and extend our aggregate selves through other people while experiencing a transcendent sense that we are part of something bigger than us alone (Belk 494).   The desire to connect with other people is part of human nature.  The social media juggernaut Facebook, much like corporate radio, have realized what Matt Silverman records in his interview with author Douglas Rushkoff: “the people paying are marketers. That makes them the customers. And it means [users] are the product being delivered to those customers.”

Newcomers to the social media onslaught, Ello, make the case for a social media network that doesn’t treat the user and the user’s privacy as a commodity, creating a “manifesto,” of which the terminal line reads, “you are not a product.”  The creators would agree with the Adorno and Horkheimer’s correlation to the Marxist idea of commodity fetishism from their chapter on “Culture Industry” from Dialectic of Enlightenment, in which they state, “The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises.”

Social media often promises connection to a community of people, an aggregated sense of self when, in fact, studies show social media increases the sense of isolation.

In our attempt to aggregate this self through technology, we risk becoming a commodity ourselves.

At this juncture, the question of “smart things” and their relationship as it comes to bear on our human existence seems to open a can of worms, leaving more questions than answers, having opened many doors.  The future is wide open and changes are developing so rapidly, that making predictions about the status of the self, of smart things, and the spaces between, would be impossible.

Works Cited

Belk, Russell.  “Extended Self in a Digital World”. Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 40, No. 3 (October 2013), pp 477-500. The University of Chicago Press. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/671052?uid=3739616&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104270254121.  02 October 2013. Web.

“The Ello Manifesto”.  Ello. https://ello.co/wtf/post/manifesto.  Web. 03 October 2014.

“iOS 8”. Apple.com.  Apple.  http://www.apple.com/ios/.  02 October 2014. Web.

Silverman, Matt. “Users For Sale: Has Digital Illiteracy Turned Us Into Social Commodities?”  Mashable.  30 June 2011. http://mashable.com/2011/06/30/users-products-rushkoff/ 02 October 2014. Web.

Wikipedia contributors. “Culture industry.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 27 Aug. 2014. Web. 4 Oct. 2014.

Image Credits

Zach Morris Telephone

http://www.solstice-mobile.com/blog/google-glass-the-zack-morris-phone-of-today

Wonka Meme

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3rfepd

Futurama Meme

http://memeshare.net/meme/Futurama_Fry/14745.html

Working in an Atlanta Culture-Mausoleum

I agree with the sentiment that Lawasky and Mather assert, that objects do indeed live a life beyond their own, and their afterlife is tied up in the ongoing human narrative.

According to the New York Times article about “extinct” objects of the aughts, I have the pleasure of keeping company with several dodos– the deposit slip, the foldable roadmap, the incandescent bulb, the fax machine, the cassette tape, and “smoking in bars.”

Until recently, the bar I where I work allowed smoking; I send faxes there from time to time, and I fill out a deposit slip after every shift I manage.  Atlanta Magazine has plenty to say about Manuel’s Tavern.

At our bar, these inanimate objects often take on a life of their own; people ask me to tell them the stories behind all kinds weird stuff hanging on the walls and even stuck to the ceiling.  Most of these items have little to no monetary value, but the history within them is beyond the dollar and subject to be lost, as the people within the stories slowly die-off and the people who know the stories slowly forget details, bit by bit.  There’s a lot of oral history floating around about people, about stories, about playing cards that hold dollars up onto the ceiling, and urns filled with the ashes of people you’ve never met.

Manuels_Tavern-132-urns 

We banned smoking back in January, but the walls and ceiling are still stained with nicotine.

Manuels_Tavern-132-Edit_CMYK

 

There’s a weird sculpture that hangs above one of the booths that many of my friends mistook for an authentic Calder, but as it turns out, my research indicated, by means of gathering informal oral histories, that an art teacher from a local institution made that sculpture while he was in prison for some serious charges.  The sculpture was rumored to have been a gift to an employee of the Tavern.

I bring this up to illustrate that discovering hard facts about  the history of objects, and getting down to the business of documenting their “life” and “death” can be down right confusing and difficult, as so much depends upon the availability of source information.

I think we’re left with more questions than answers.

Also, much depends on the rhetorical situation of the object in question– to what or for what end was the object brought into the situation being studied, and what significance does the object hold in the context of its current “incarnation,” and for whom does this object have value?  For whom does it have meaning?  For how long of a timeline does an object remain relevant?  How can all of these categorical situations be subject to change due to cultural or technological evolution?

Works Cited

Burns, Rebecca.  “The Museum of Manuel’s”. Atlanta Magazine. 05 August 2014.  Web. 21 September 2014.

Photographs by Patrick Healy, Atlanta Magazine

McClanahan, Thayer. “Rust in Peace”. New York Times.  06 December 2009.  Web. 21 September 2014.

 

Cuteness: An Internet and Cultural Remora

The appeal of cuteness is ubiquitous.  Derek Willis calls cat pictures “the essential building block of the internet.”  Cuteness is that inescapable quality that makes adults turn into silly, blubbering rubberneckers of babies with villainous eyebrows drawn on, tiny elephants, memes with baby hippopotami, and the infamous Lil Bub.

In “The Powerful Authority of Cute Animals”, Beatrice Marovich, argues that talismanic objects, both living and inanimate, “confer a kind of expedient magic that humans can use for their individual or collective benefit.”  Marovich elucidates many cultural phenomena that stem from our penchant for cute things; I want to focus on the concept that cuteness is an inherent quality in nature and the physiological response that we innately encounter when presented with cuteness.

That benefit Marovich describes ties in well with the research from Kringelbach and Stein of Oxford University, which suggests an evolutionary reason for our being drawn toward cuteness: preservation of our own species.

A 2008 study of human brain waves when confronted with “cute” images of human babies provoked an identical response with parents, and non-parents; study of frontal-lobe brain activity suggests that there is a response to this “cuteness” that is unique to the images of babies– images of adults provoked no such response. They suggest that this is a Darwinian evolutionary mechanism wherein adults feel responsible for the care of young.

Not only do adults seem to be hardwired towards a psychic response to cuteness, but also, according to research published in Psychology Frontier Journal in July, 2014, children as young as 3 have the ability to perceive cuteness.  So adults and children both have an innate mechanism that senses inherent cuteness.

So where does cuteness and our study of objects intersect?  The ability of toddlers to perceive cuteness leads to the concept that cuteness is not something culturally manufactured, but a quality inherent in nature.  The dilemma comes with the human invention of synthetic cuteness.

Made-made versions of cuteness transform an abstract quality into anobject, the subject of our ongoing discussion as it pertains to material culture.

Once cuteness crosses the objectified threshold from abstract quality to manufactured experience, we face a new dilemma, in that we may have trouble ever returning to the concept of abstraction.  In the face of technology, the line between inherent and manufactured cuteness all but disappears: the natural cuteness of a kitten or a baby becomes objectified as a video taken on a smartphone and uploaded to America’s Funniest Videos, and no longer merely “exists” in a passive sense, but exists now dually as an object and a quality.

So whether it’s in our DNA to appreciate cuteness or that we’re living in an environment where cuteness is a marketing ploy, the undeniable reality of the situation is that we’re inundated with this object and this abstraction.

 

Works Cited

Borgi, M., Cogliati-Dezza, I., Brelsford, V., Meints, K., Cirulli, F.: Baby schema in human and animal faces induces cuteness perception and gaze allocation in children: Frontiers in Psychology 5:411. DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00411

“Identifying The Cuteness Response?.” Psychologist 21.5 (2008): 372-373. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 5 Sept. 2014.

Marovich, Beatrice. The Powerful Authority of Cute Animals.  The Atlantic. 14 May 2014. 05 September 2014. Web.

University of Lincoln. “Children as young as three recognize ‘cuteness’ in faces of people, animals.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 July 2014.<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140721100119.htm>.

Willis, Derek.  What the Internet Can See From Your Cat Pictures. The Upshot, The New York Times.  22 July 2014. 05 September 2014. Web.