The picture on the right was taken on a hiking trip in Pasadena over the past summer. I love the outdoors... and I love being active. I firmly believe that the body and the mind are two parts of a complete whole and each has a need for the other. But this post isn't about that.*insert smooth transition here*
Hong Kong is all about trends. Things become popular fast and in waves, which means things don't die out that quickly either. That's why every time you walk in the MTR, you are almost certain to see someone in the same compartment playing on an iPhone. It's the new "it" phone and a fad which has a tempting and lasting power on consumers. I admit... I've wanted one. Its functionality, ease-of-use... and just the fact that everyone has one! The many different covers available out there make it so hard to resist. iPhone covers are sold in almost half of the shops at the Ladies Market and you can almost instantly find one in any street shop or MTR. They give that illusion of uniqueness--you can choose your favorite color or cartoon character. "Yeah, I have an iPhone, look at my cool cover!"
It is a well-known fact that the Apple market in Hong Kong is incredibly omnipotent. Everything is so well-advertised. And most consumers, surprisingly, don't mind being victims. It is a good product, after all, but its performance as a smartphone pales in comparison with some of its competitors. Again, it's marketing at work. That and the fact that the anti-capitalist sentiment you find in the USA is almost absent in Hong Kong, at least in the people I've talked to.
Another point of observation is that technology is so immersive these days. Remember when video games were just up, down, left, and right in a 2-D world? Imagine how far its come since then and notice how it made the transition to handheld devices. You will see most people in the MTR wrapped up in an iPhone game, texting, browsing the internet on their smartphone, listening to music through their headphones, talking on the phone, or simply browsing whatever electronic device they have because there's nothing else to do.
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad technology has the capacity to cure boredom during your travels... and I don't see anything wrong in doing so in moderation while traveling on the MTR... but I fear the implications this has for our future. The real world will become more surreal than the immersive technological world we delve ourselves into. Functionality outside of technology might just become awkward and, I believe, the rift between the human mind and the body will become even greater. Ohh, now you see the connection with the photo? I value how physical activity gives us a sense of being alive. Technology just feels dead after some time.
The observation is easy to make but... what about solutions? I don't know, I'm still thinking...
Speaking of technology, I did an analysis of why I have so many friends on Facebook and how that even happened. My hypothesis was that I have a lot of different places to come from with a lot of opportunities to meet people. I estimated it as this (and no, I'm not bored out of my mind... I was just curious):
The friends of friends category was surprisingly large, but it also includes other categories such as when I worked at UCLA for a summer or family friends, et cetera. In the end, it was just interesting data and in no way suggests anything about my social behavior. What? I'm not a sociologist!!
No comments:
Post a Comment