NAKED CITY: NEW AGE MESSIAH OR JUST ANOTHER GADGET KING?

Here at the Naked City we have to make the brutal confession that we have never owned an iPod, an iPhone or an iPad, let alone even downloaded an app. Call us techno-atheists if you like but we still linger in the comforting warmth of the analogue world. As a result the recent outpourings of grief, together with the massive media coverage, over the death of Apple supremo Steve Jobs have left us both alienated and bemused – a bit like learning the Pope has died when you are a lapsed Catholic.

It’s sad when anybody dies prematurely, particularly of something as devastating as pancreatic cancer, but were the eulogies comparing Steve with Einstein and John Lennon just a wee bit grandiose? “The whole world is mourning” reported one TV news service and yes we are sure they would have been distraught in North Korea, Somalia and Afghanistan not to mention the rest of the third world.

The whole Apple phenomenon, often compared to a quasi religious movement, has been psychoanalysed by numerous sociologists and cultural anthroplogists, many pointing to the vanity value of the various Apple gadgets beloved by the more affluent members of generation me. Status, self-importance and indeed even spiritual fulfilment cannot be defined in the new millennium unless you have a swag of i-Things to market your inner self. The presentation of the each new phone or pad where Jobs lauded the almost spiritual value of the new technology often resembled a kind of evangelical revival meeting. All that was lacking was the mass choir of Apple devotees singing hymns from the book of Job – sorry Jobs.

And what about those thousands of Apple followers who regularly queued outside Apple stores worldwide awaiting the first sales of the new iPhone or iPad. They had plenty of time to ponder the news that Chinese workers in gulag like mega factories churning out Apple parts for minimal wages, often suicided due to the enormous stress they worked under.

The stark reality is that most obsolete Apple products, as much loved, fondled and worshipped as they were when they first appeared, will eventually join the mountains of E-Waste that scar the landscape particularly in countries such as Ghana and Nigeria. You don’t release a new iPad or iPhone every few years unless you subscribe to the age old capitalist manufacturing ethic of inbuilt obsolescence.  Apple might call it technical innovation but the dilemma that fervent Apple patrons face is where to ethically dump that out of date pad or phone.

Luckily and somewhat piously we admit, we old fashioned technophobic luddites don’t have that problem – at least not with the frequency of the me generation. Sending emails on an old Commodore 64 can be a tedious process but at least we sleep sound at night!