Infantilizing Gadget Tree

Yeah, I use my spell-checker, but seriously...

I started poking around with a WiFi Kindle the other day for someone who's a generation or two removed from the Internet and was struck by how clunky and unresponsive it was to my “tapping.” Not only was it's general performance less than stellar, but entering text in search boxes and form fields was a gruesome adventure in learning, apparently, how much larger my fingers are compared to the demographic the Kindle's design team had in mind. I'm not a gadget-head, and so I can only judge the experience through my highly circumscribed interaction with the products I see walking (into me) down the street.

The "touch-screen" aesthetic seems more about returning people to their Fisher-Price days than it is about convenience or efficacy. When I watch people on the subway or in elevators repeatedly flicking a finger across their screens as they scroll through what must be interminable lists of songs or emails or multimedia, I can't help but wonder if they're looking for anything in particular or just amusing themselves with busy-work. I can see that they're very important people; they have so much crap on their hand held device that they can't find what they need or want. Yes indeed, very important: I'll be sure to get out of your way, since you're so preoccupied in tunnel-visualizing the world.

One of the things that strikes me as aggressively invasive is the constant advertising dropped into the Kindle's user experience, and I imagine, not caring to dig into a Google search to verify, that it defrays the cost of their network.

Here's a product that once paid for, one you may become attached to through it's relevance to you desires or requirements, that then becomes a digital pitch-man in your pocket. W. T. F. ?? You don't rent a Kindle or the eBooks for it; you BUY them.

Why would you want to subject yourself to further commercial propaganda, unless of course you're so enured to it that you really don't mind being confronted with endless advertising. I am now certain that in the depressingly not distant enough future, generations will give no thought at all to lives surrounded, enmeshed and dominated by constant appeals to their identity and money – or has it already happened?.  Que muy triste.

Which brings us to the “WhiteNoise” BADvertising shown above. I know there's no free lunch. I know that all the free services I come to rely on need to be supported through revenue of some kind, and as long as I'm suffering the visible discharge of those costs I might as well have some fun. And make a point.

Go ahead. Show me your 'ads.'

I went prowling – perhaps trolling is more accurate – into the site for the original ad and came across this page of slacker enabling codswallop. Living in America, it's easy to infantilize lazy, ignorant and just plain stupid people. You can make a fortune.