My Cyber Monday struggle by Naresh Ramchandani
Cyber Monday is upon us. Completing four days of rampant consumerism that began with Black Friday, it is our annual commercial clickfest, and boy do we splurge. On this day last year, the UK spent £10,000 every second, mostly on technotronica. And today we are likely to beat our previous record as we salivate on this year’s screens at next year’s screens, frantically wondering what combination of phone, tablet, television, console and camera can complete us, can make us more on it and with it than we already are.
Am I Cybertempted? Well, part of me is. It’s the same part of me that made me buy a new phone last year and is now firmly convinced that I need another one. It argues that my phone’s 10 megabyte camera may have been amazing a year ago but is now positively jurassic. That a year ago, a four-inch screen with single domain pixels was my ticket to being on-trend, but now I a must simply have a five-inch screen with double-domain pixels, and what’s more, I must have it now. My cursor hovers over the Buy It button….
…but I do not click. And that’s because another part of me takes another view, one that’s less pixel-perfect. Rather than looking at what technology can do for me, it looks at what technology has done to me, and tells me what it sees, and asks me if I like it.
It tells me that I used to be good at noticing things, and now I’m not so good at noticing things. That I once used to look out for terrific buildings, and nice trees, and spectacular sunsets, and ornamental front gardens, and stunningly horrendous curtains, and obscenely funny graffiti, and intriguingly shaped faces, but I don’t do it anymore because I’m too busy looking down at my screen to look up and out at my world.
It tells me that I used to wonder what was around the next corner, but I now I use my map app to tell me whether I need to take the corner or not, and to show me what it looks like even if I do. It tells me that I have lost the ability to be patient. That I used to stand at bus stops and accept I had to wait. That I used to check emails at the beginning and at the end of the day. But now I track my buses with psychopathic restlessness. And if I haven’t had an email in the last two minutes, I will convince myself of my relevance by pinging off a few myself.
It tells me that I’m losing my ability and willingness to remember. That I used to wrack my brain to recall the first film made by Nicolas Winding Refn, or the date of the Battle of Trafalgar, or the guitar chords of Fake Plastic Trees, or the names of the state capital of Kerala, and now I just check my phone.
It tells me that I used to be good at talking to people, and now I’m not so good. That the so-called smart part of my smartphone means that I engage with my Instagram followers and Facebook friends more readily and naturally than I do with the people around me. And that the wonderful dance of conversation, a dance I used to do so happily, feels increasingly cumbersome beyond first 140 characters.
And it tells me that I have lost the ability to be happy with what I’ve got. It reminds me that my very first mobile phone was pretty amazing. Regardless of where I was standing, it actually allowed me to make calls to anyone regardless of where they were standing. Wow. And with every piece of technology I’ve ever bought since, I’ve become a little more anxious, a little more impatient, a little more needy, a little less thoughtful, a little less curious and a little less content.
Although Cyber Monday is upon me, offering me the chance to be with it, I’m not sure that ‘it’ is something I want to be with. Let me steer away from the Buy It button, at least for today.
