It MUST Be Better!

I noticed something today. Nothing new. In fact it's been staring me in the face for quite a while, however I was missing a vital piece of the puzzle. One cogent thought that brought the whole situation into focus and sent me into a thought-stupor so great that the immediate area around me became a whirling vortex of unstable time-space energies. What thought you may ask? (Or may not ask, but for this exercise I'm going to assume you did). The thought was this; "If I fitted a camera to a potato, I'm fairly sure I could sell it...".

In this age it seems that it is a widely held belief that ANYTHING, no matter how small, useless, or mundane, can be made infinitely better with the simple addition of a camera. Mobile phones have cameras, hand-held gaming systems have cameras, even CAMERAS have cameras...However that may just be a coincidence. It seems these days you can market almost anything, even if it's otherwise exactly the same as the "last generation model", as a completely new product as long as you've somehow integrated a camera into it.

Are we so easily bedazzled? Or is it simply the flock mentality that tells us that because someone is selling it and calling it new, that it must be the next best thing and hence we must obtain it? Has our society has become so consumer driven that we allow ourselves to be 'tricked' into buying the newest, the shiniest, the most compact, even though in many occasions we already own something that has the same functions minus a superfluous one that we don't even need?

I understand that some would argue the point of convenience. And sure, having a camera built into your phone may be useful on a few occasions when you see something amazing and wouldn't otherwise have had a means to record it visually, but I don't understand how it has now become a staple component of technology. Phones I can sort of understand, in a "I can see how it would be useful to some people" kind of way, but why are they suddenly popping up everywhere? Why do you need a camera in an iPod for example? A device solely created for the enjoyment of music (and later video) does not need a camera built into it, be it still-frame or otherwise.

An average person of my generation will most likely have on them, at any given time, a mobile phone, an MP3 device of some sort, and possibly a hand-held gaming console (depending on available pocket/bag space and location/destination). If you narrow that down to specifically ANY mobile phone created in the last 3-4 years, a newer iPod and a Nintendo DSi, that person is now walking around carrying THREE cameras! Without having an actual camera on their person! WHY?!

The unfortunate truth is that until all technology eventually amalgamates into one device that does it all, which of course it is slowly deviating towards, we will be constantly bombarded by "New" products that are simply slightly different versions of things we already own. In the mean time I'll just be happy if my phone receives/distributes phone conversation and text messages, my MP3 player plays music, my games play games, and my camera takes pictures. Sure it means I have a particular device for any given circumstances, but until they create a Star Trek'esque Triquarter that does almost anything I don't see the point of updating every 6 months.


- For Sanity's Sake