[1]Last Tuesday, I was one of 600,000 acolytes ordering the new iPhone. It took hours, and several attempts of filling in the form, before the site was ready to accept payment. I was a click away from techno-climax, when I decided to take a breath and ask myself the unthinkable: Do I really NEED this phone? I hovered on the “purchase now” button, for a long, couple of minutes, as my heart raced, sweat beading up. This frenzy, so brilliantly engineered by Apple, put me in good company, but it made me feel uneasy. And the point was hammered home in the Times a few days later, when it devoted one of its few editorials to the Half-Life of Phones [2], asking us to soul search as to the environmental impact of our obsession with novelty. Last Tuesday, I found the discipline to wait. And mostly, I’m glad I did. But if you’re looking for me this weekend, I could be off the wagon, waiting in line with the masses at the Apple store.
Image: VHS, 2010, by Hollis Brown Thornton [3] (permanent marker on paper).