The Mac IPhone
The Popular Electronics Culture
Popular culture is the mainstream of life defining how our American society progresses throughout our daily lives. Popular culture is all around us and influences the daily decisions we all encounter. Popular culture is a compilation of sub-cultures defined or identified by various benign artifacts. One of these sub-cultures has become so popular we have become accustomed to it that we take it for granted because it has become a part of our daily lives. We experience it everyday, for example the driver in the passing SUV speaking into his or her hands free Bluetooth cell phone adapter appearing to be talking to him or herself but yet no one is really paying attention to it. What is this ever so popular sub-culture redefining American popular culture? It is the Popular Electronics Culture, the new wave, and the “I gotta have the latest and greatest” generation..
Understanding today’s popular culture means understanding technology. If you can speak and understand technology not are you only an integral part of the mainstream society but individually marketable. Industry needs technically advanced employees more than ever. The average American worker can easily complete two times the paperwork over an office worker 15 years ago. Colleges and universities focus a majority of their curriculum on the mechanisms to find the information needed to complete a task and how to understand the information once it is found. Teaching of the actual information is no longer necessary because technology advances so rapidly that by the time the student enters the workforce the information will be obsolete.
The Macintosh IPhone is one of the supreme artifacts of this ever evolving Popular Electronics Culture. It is a physical representation of every feature ever requested for a phone. It is the obvious artifact for the Popular Electronics Culture because it is the most sought after gadget on the market. The irony of the situation is that the IPhone’s reign will be short lived. It won’t be long before the next best electronic gadget takes the throne and grasp the already short attention spans of every gadget geek in America. The larger irony is that we are all gadget geeks and don’t even realize it!
3 comments:
I agree that technology is an important part of popular culture. It is extremely necessary for businesses to keep up with the latest changes in technology in order to remain competitive. Unfortunately for the Average Joe, it can be quite costly with no returns.
Yes, I'm a wannabe gadget geek. I get caught up in all of the advertising of the newest gadgets like the Iphone. Now Verizon has the Voyager, which is supose to be comparable to the iphone, without the hefty pricetag. And even though I can barely work my regular cell phone, I find myself wanting the Voyager. Like you said, as soon as you buy it; you'll want the next bigger and better version of it. : )
Yes, I agree the ever changing technology plays an important part of our society. We are in a very competitive age in just not technology but also in the age arena. We as a society are every changing and the ability to grasp new technology is trial and error. TAke Microsoft for example. I could of swore I just learned ever thing in windows xp and now they come out with this new vista mess. I understand there is a need to create new and better things, but why with such a hefty price tag. An average person can count on spending a good amount of one paycheck every 3 years to upgrade a computer program that we desparately need. But can you ever imagine if we had a totaly blackout and we never had a chance to use a computer again. What would the world come to and do?
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