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iPhone Will Broker World Peace
Luscious Uber-Gizmo Also Rumored To Cure Brain Cancer, Provide Oral Sex. All True!
Baby, the Cold War is so back on.
Did you hear? Dour, pale-as-vodka Russian President Vlad "Cold, Humorless Stare" Putin took one look at the war-hungry Bush-pocked American agenda for building a new missile shield and stockpiling fresh arsenals of WMD in eastern Europe (It's to protect us from those scary Iranian nukes! BushCo stammered, obviously lying like dogs), slammed a shot of frozen Stoli and pounded his tiny white fist on the solid mahogany parliament table and said, "We will bury you," just before spontaneously bursting into a glorious shower of silver confetti, pink flower petals and tiny black sparrows.
Wait, I might have that a little bit wrong. I might have torqued my facts a little, my vision slightly askew, though surely you can understand given how right now it's just so easy to become, you know, distracted, just slightly sidetracked, what with so many brutally numbing war stories and then this loud divine humming noise coming from Cupertino and what with this entirely enthralling quadruplet of dangerously beautiful new iPhone commercials now available to the world like sultry Siamese cats wearing shiny necklaces made of chocolate and Ecstasy and porn.
Wait, I might be exaggerating that just a little, too. What can you do?
Ah, but what a distraction it is. Have you heard of the iPhone? Have you heard of, say, oxygen? Duh. Of course you have. Fact is, not only has the entire universe heard of this glorious and eminently distracting gizmo, but anticipation for the damnable thing is apparently running so scaldingly high for its now-official June 29 release date that Apple is rumored to be downplaying the rollout just a bit.
It's true. Apple PR is apparently actually being forced to manage expectations so there's not some sort of titanic weeping backlash when those 3 million iPhones finally hit the streets and everyone goes, Hey, what the hell, you mean it's only a cell phone and an iPod and a Web browser and an e-mail program and a digital camera and an IM client and photo library and a movie player in one gorgeous tiny gizmo the size of a tin of Altoids?
That's it? That's all it does? You mean it does not confer instant transcendental enlightenment? It does not make my skin look younger and more supple? It will not make my wife want to deliver more enthusiastic oral sex or make my kids actually want to speak to me or perhaps get Israel and Palestine to stop hating on each other and it won't help us all numb the savage karmic pain of the fact that our president remains a childish hell-born imbecile? Well, maybe just a little.
Because this, I am hereby forecasting, will be the feeling. This is the sort of hope we put on new goods from Jobs and Co. these days. And why not? Why not allow ourselves the momentary pleasure of presuming that, for one of the few times in our short history, a delightful human gadget might enter the technological food chain and maybe, just maybe, make life just a tiny bit more ... oh, I don't know. Elegant? Sensual? Cohesive? Tactile? There are worse things to imagine, no?
Perhaps you do not believe me. Perhaps you're all "oh, pish posh humbug bulls--" (in which case I doubt you are reading this column right now because you are probably 116 years old, and dead. But never mind that now).
Then perhaps you should just watch the new ads yourself, over at Apple.com and on YouTube and in your florid orgasmic gizmo daydreams, which I admit is a crazy proposition in and of itself as normally I would never encourage anyone to intentionally watch a commercial (except perhaps that one brilliant European ad for condoms), but, hey, it's the iPhone, the most hyped and most anticipated new gadget since The Cone vibrator and the iPod-enabled fireplace and hence if you care at all for modern tech and elegant design and Steve Jobs' godlike aura you simply have to pay attention because it's, like, the law.
The ads are, as you might expect, beguiling, and lucid, and nearly perfect. They do nothing but show the lovely thing in action, up close and entrancing, this little $500 toy doing so much so fluidly with such a graceful and intuitive interface you can only sit back and watch and go, Oh please. Come on. Nothing is that good. Nothing is that easy. Nothing can possibly deliver on such a promise of making my media-soaked life so much more clear and likable and harmonious and peaceful dreamlike juicy happy. Wait, can it?
Here's the thing: Maybe this time such a distraction can be healthy. Maybe this time it's a good form of anticipation, the kind of sheer unadulterated consumerist nirvana that actually lifts you out of this brutal spiritual stasis and allows you a glimpse of a world sans scowls and warmongering and incessant error messages. You think?
Hey, I know how it is. There you are, trying like any good American to be all wary and jaded and depressed for the thousandth time as you read about, say, the bloodiest month on record in Iraq for U.S. war casualties or how Bush has nominated yet another absolutely awful candidate for a high-ranking judicial slot or even the one about Scooter Libby taking the 2.5-years-in-prison bullet for Dick "Waking Nightmare" Cheney, when boom, you see the ad about how the iPhone senses which way it's rotated and the screen adjusts accordingly, and suddenly you're whipped out of your torpid lethargy and spanked back into some sort of shallow but delightful oh-my-God-it's-so-cool happiness.
Really, why not just give in? Why not, in this case, just enjoy it? Yes, the thing's wildly overhyped. Yes, it's just a glorified telephone and, yes, the army of Apple haters is right this minute sharpening their knives in anticipation of slamming every tiny flaw they can find in the iPhone, right along with how much they hate anything Apple does because, you know, who cares about simplicity and grace and thoughtful functionality in modern technology? Right.
It's OK. Let 'em rage. I say let the iPhone divert our collective attention, just for a few precious, suspended moments. Why not? After all, with the iPod as its stunning, groundbreaking predecessor, it's one of the few things -- unlike Putin or Lindsay or even our wayward and war-weary national agenda -- that seems to actually have earned it.
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him. Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle.
© The San Francisco Chronicle
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11 Comments so far
Show AllIt is the same as I mentioned in what I thought about how I saw the former soviet union raptured with our culture of glorifed stuff. It was written 2 years ago before I ever saw an iPod but I quote the relevant section below similar in theme (including but without as much sex) and without the "buy apple" theme in shinynewcool.htm
"Even in the West, it is used to keep people occupied while generations of achievements in real freedom are lost. It is almost as if you offered a single small device that they could make calls on, control all the appliances and lights in their house with, get email on, watch video on, play games on, listen to music with, stimulate their genitals with, diagnose their blood pressure, temperature, and heartrate with, clean their teeth with, style their hair with, and warm their coffee by, then they probably would be completely oblivious to anything horrible their societies may be doing to others or their rights and consider themselves the greatest society on Earth for letting them buy such marvelous devices. Undoubtedly their society would be the new pinnacle of human civilization!... then they can possibly succumb without much harsh consequences to a culture based on "stuff", having stuff, getting more stuff, showing off your stuff, and playing with your stuff. For the rest of the world, and undoubtedly we all are in one degree or another in that category, it is the classic bait and switch. Look, Shiny... New... Cool... Wham!... turned into countries of beggars, prostitutes, petty thieves, crime syndicates, corrupt police, corrupt courts and parliaments, and the only real freedom they got other than the freedom to complain about it, was the freedom to buy "stuff" if ever they could figure out how to screw each other over enough to be able to get some of it for themselves. .. even politicians and governments are just commodities to them now to be bought, sold, and monopolized at whim or whimsy. We have choices, but they are all by design made to be irrelevant. All arms connect to the same head, all choices made available to us are forever intended to water down true choices for freedom, to new brands of stuff we can pay for by getting more and more others to starve to death to free up more resources for us for new gadgets and games we will no doubt continue to be dazzled with. Talking robots, people selling their organs for food, 3D computer displays, people choosing to be sold into slavery so they can eat another day no matter what they are forced to do, 700 horsepower cars with satellite TV's inside. Look, Shiny... New... Cool... Wham!
from www.polsci.com/shinynewcool.htm
I agree with other commentators: this doesn't deserve to be posted here. Not only has Morford written a piece that is essentially advertising, but elsewhere in previous articles he has mentioned that HE OWNS STOCK IN APPLE!!! Holy crap, what he's done should be illegal.
Take this story down immediately--that's my request. Leave the comments and a link to the story and an apology for posting it.
A perfect example of advertising: to make you want what you don't need - even parodies "I spend to distract myself from what's real and make myself feel better"
buy buy buy
let some other cry or die
I'm too busy bein' high
Got the newest piece of pie!
so who cares if its a lie.
So, ads disguised as journalism make their way onto Common Dreams.
This is no less than a blatant infomercial targeted to progressives. I hope this was a mistake due to inattention, and not what it looks like.
Elohi Gadugi Journal
Technology is great but the iPhone doesn't fix the underlying problems. It's a "cell phone and an iPod and a Web browser and an e-mail program and a digital camera and an IM client and photo library and a movie player."
Great, cell phones generate useless talk about nonsense -- 99.9% of cell phone calls are not the life saving emergency calls that sell such things.
An iPod is wonderful, but most of the music produced now is corporate piffle. Proof? Turn on a radio. Ditto squared for movies.
Digital cameras can't be used for security reasons across America. Go ahead, take a picture of the Holland Tunnel and see what happens. So what good is the photo library function?
A web browser to bring more porn and shopping sites to the Googling generation.
An e-mail program to make spam more ubiquitous.
An IM client, in case you can't be bothered to use the cell phone or e-mail.
The trouble is a lack of quality content in our lives.
But you gotta admit, this guy has a witty capacity with words that simulates a concert pianist's use of the keyboard!
Yeah, I don't watch television so I had never heard of the i-phone before this article, and won't be buying one...
Why blow five hundred bucks on an Ipod, when for well less than twice that much, you can pick up a Sumiko Blackbird?
Silly me.
I thought that was satire, not salesmanship.
maryannsalo, the "satire" was not lost on me. It's exactly what you need if you are marketing to the left. Not at all mutually exclusive.
Hey look everybody, come on, lighten up. Allow us a moment of technolust, indulge our connectivity fetish. (I'm still waiting for the Star Trek communicator pin - slap the button on your lapel and talk to anyone in the world, it's probably less than ten years away...)
So yeah, he's some writer in San Fran. And like any of us present or former creative activist futurist types from there, we probably know someone at Apple. And you know what? They are NOT just out to make a buck, they are out to empower and change the world and make connectivity technology the servant, not the master, of us creative change the world types. Otherwise, they would go work for Microsoft, ya know? And remember..."IN A WORLD WITHOUT WALLS AND FENCES, THERE WOULD BE NO NEED FOR WINDOWS AND GATES!"
That being said, dear readers, the founder of the GreenDemocraticAlliance.org would like to announce that his iBook is fried dead and he is seeking a kind donation of a replacement...how's that for an unabashed ad? Oh wait a minute...is this Craigslist? oops...sorry...um...here, anyway, Don at GreenDemocraticAlliance.org...just do it.
Don St.Clair founded the Greens For Gore Coalition 2000 and its successor organization, the GreenDemocraticAlliance.org, and was a featured op ed writer here on CommonDreams.org on election day 2004 - http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1101-24.htm
- "Ten Reasons For Greens To Vote For Kerry"