THB 100,000 flies can be wrong

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Week 13

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Motion: THB 100,000 flies cannot be wrong
Role: MP (opp.)

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Consumption and consumers are often viewed as the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith fame of economical theory. The idea is that masses always choose fit solutions for themselves, as they are smarter together in a mass. But, is it really like that or is it rather so that stupidity concentrates in a thicker crowd of people? I am going to focus on three cases of masses being behind a bad service provider or solution. You can then decide for yourselves what this means in practice.

Gmail as an E-mail Service
At some point Gmail became the world’s favourite e-mail-server, much like Google, its parent, became the world’s favourite search engine. I was never one to trust Gmail, as I had secured a Hotmail address for myself at the turn of the millennium. At one point I got to know Gmail, as it was the internal e-mail-server of a workplace I worked for for half a year. I soon discovered Gmail’s forte: it did not separate multiple answers as different e-mails but compiled all of them into a single thread. It was economical in a way the first e-mail inboxes hadn’t been.

Alas, Hotmail developed while Gmail was left treading water in other ways than that one way. Little by little, my sweet Hotmail has gone from a humble e-mail client to a sleek machine that can easily sort out the most bedeviling mixture of ads, bills, correspondence, matter-of-fact e-mails, receipts, spam and subscribed newsletters. It works equally well on a tablet as a desktop, while Gmail is a mess. Gmail’s inbox may contain e-mails dating back a few years, even if I knew that I had deleted or sorted them out in the past. It feels as if Alphabet Inc. was trying to turn everyone as disorganised as those people who never learn to delete mail or sort it into different subfolders, keeping everything in Inbox. As if a film director or producer who has his whole film as piles of paper on his desk, waiting to be finished, knowing where every document is and what means what. Outlook (est. as HM) is a clear victor in this respect, as it allows to keep organised.

Pizza Restaurant East Side Downtown
There is a pizzeria right in the middle of the city where I studied. I did not frequent that pizzeria back in those days, but other people do and did. It begins to gather a line or queue from the early morning through noon into the afternoon and evening. You can hardly get a seat there let alone a table. It is highly profitable, and the pizza chefs do not see a moment of rest. I cannot imagine how they cope with being forced to bake pizza hour in and hour out. “If you cannot stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen” and so on, but still.

For all that, it was revealed some time ago that the pizzeria does not bake its own dough. Pizza foundations arrive frozen and prefabricated from a food factory somewhere in Southern Finland. So, the glorified task of the baker is to just take a frozen foundation, sprinkle all kinds of toppings ordered all over it, push it into the oven, take it out and serve it as an “Italian delicacy”. The whole place is a kind of fraud. The pizza salad they serve with the pizza is delicious, but I wonder if even that is real or just styrofoam soaked in vinegar. In addition, you cannot share personal secrets at the pizzeria, as it is so crowded and full-seated. Inter nos. For now, I have set a moratorium on going there.

Tablets vs. Mobile Phones
What unites mobile phones and tablets is that the latter tend to be magnified versions of the former without telephonic qualities. All the same, I could not use a mobile phone while I can use a tablet. Everything is facile on a tablet. I can work my way around banking, blogging, e-mail, game that I play, government’s services, reading newspapers and tuning in to my streaming service of choice. It is just intuitive and nice. In contrast, mobile phones are a mess, at least when it comes to Android. I cannot manage any of that on a mobile phone. I could not travel around the world with a mobile phone to save my life. Still, the vast majority of the world’s population seem to thrive on that pesky little rectangle just alright.

What all of this boils down to is that there is no reason why you should follow the masses wherever they might be going. They can be misguided and wrong. They may choose alternatives that are popular but not right – for you, at least. Consumeristically and technologically speaking, there are always people who swim upstream and you could be one of them. You may choose an Atari ST over a Commodore Amiga. You may choose a Range Rover over an SUV. And you have your reasons, pragmatics being chief among them. Whatever you choose, be proud, and remember that 100,000 flies can be wrong.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t). Aiheeni on ajatuksia herättävä kannanotto vastuullisen kuluttamisen puolesta. Annan konkreettisia esimerkkejä, joiden takia minun kannattaa olla 3. puhuja puolellani. Puoleni ajaa käsitystä ihmisestä omien valintojensa herrana ja vastuunkantajana. 

THB smartphones turn people into purposeless fools

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Week 11

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Motion: THB smartphones are a multi-purpose tool
Role: Deputy Leader (opp.)

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I do not own a smartphone. Out of curiosity, I once borrowed my “legendary” girlfriend’s mobile phone and held it in my hand in a kebab restaurant after a meal. I went online into social media and tried to run my business there. It was hopeless. The arrows did not follow my directions. I could not get anything done. I could watch but I could not interact. It was a miserable experience. I do own a mobile phone of the old school for calls and texts. The tardiness and unresponsiveness of mobile phones is still their major drawback. Even if they would work wonderfully with the fastest available 5G connectivity, most people cannot afford that but have to rely on something cheaper and nastier.

Addiction to Mobile Phone Is Like Chainsmoking
People use their mobile phones like a life-long smoker employs cigarettes, cigars, e-cigarettes or snuff. Smartphoning and tobacco products provide a break in the grey monotony of everyday life and a bridge to some alternative universe. The relief of the mobile phone is external, the relief in nicotine internal. The experience can also be built into a chain, as we have seen happen. People cannot always stop their online co-existence; just look at all the people in public transportation with devices in their hands complete with a source of noise and earbuds, just the same as they may light a smoke from the stub of the earlier one and thus build a continuity.

There is also another dimension that they share. Both are ritualistic, routine behaviours, where ritual, sameness and similarity is key. People usually smoke a certain brand and are loath to swap it for something else, even if tobacco brands smell alike and probably also burn alike. When people surf on the Internet, they usually divide their time between few destinations, unable to choose alternative ones, even if the internet is a vast, oceanlike place with lots of places to go. A habit forces people to just consume the content of a select few sites.

Mobile Phones Fit Into One’s Breast or Other Pocket
There is also the similarity that a mobile phone is handy in the same way a pack of cigarettes is; it can be fitted into most pockets in one’s garments. It is easy to produce. Both are rectangular in shape. Earlier mobile phones were not so similar. Nokia Communicator, for instance, was different in shape, so it did not bear the likeness of a pack of smokes. You also need to protect both against humidity and moisture. A mobile phone won’t work around wet, and ciggies don’t catch fire if they are damp.

What I’m saying is that smartphones are alike packs of cigarettes. It has been said of the latter that at one point they were “the World’s cheapest status symbol”, which meant that they were brand products that even peoples in the underdeveloped world could buy and have. I fear that that distinction now goes to smartphone, as it so readily available all over the world. Refugees have smartphones. Their spread is alike that of Marlboro Reds that are also everywhere, like Coca-Cola is. And then there is their affordability. Smartphones have that quality as they can usually be bought in installments on an installment plan, and that is why they are affordable to everyone and also bought by relatively poor people. Loco alimenti circenses ludicras habent.

Smartphones Are the Postmodern Equivalent of a Pack of Cigarettes
I think that I have proven that smartphones are not a multi-purpose tool that they are claimed to be but rather something more sinister. They are the postmodern version of a pack of cigarettes. A drug. A drug of the upper and/or downer family. Surprisingly many things unite the two as a common factor, as has been demonstrated above and earlier on. And what does that mean by extension?? That – they’re bad for you!! of course. 

Like smoking has been phased out by successive steps in society, beginning in 1995, when the first anti-smoking measures were imposed legislatively, it is likely that smartphones could go toward the same fate, except that there is no such legislation so far, not even bills in the pipeline. All the same, changing that is just a matter of time, not of opportunity. Parliaments could swiftly turn against smartphones with help from imaginative MPs and multipartisan committees.    (Here is a related article I discovered only later on.)

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t). Käyn mobiilia yhteiskuntaa vastaan vahvoilla argumenteilla, jotka pohjautuvat todellisuuteen ja sen luonteeseen. Minua ei haittaisi, vaikka faxit, kaapeli-tv, lankalinjat ja puhelinkopit olisivat vielä käytössä, koska niihin liittyy 1900-luvun romantiikkaa. Vastapuolen edustajista ja heidän assertioistaan tuskin on pulaa, koska älypuhelimet ovat lyöneet niin hyvin itsensä läpi yhteiskunnallisesti, joten tästä tulee rehellinen ja tasaväkinen väittely.