Choice is Good

Consumer Vertigo is about why having tons of choices is a great thing, even though most social critics would disagree. I agree with Postrel, choices are a great thing to have. We have so many choices, I don’t know what I would do if they all just went away one day. “Choice is everywhere, liberating to some but to others a new source of stress.”

We have so many different things to choose from, so many different options that the choices can be overwhelming at times, but mostly, only when you are stressed out about something else. Like, when I went to the store the other day, when I should have been studying for a test and writing a paper, but I needed tennis shoes that didn’t have holes in the sole, so I had to go, but could only be there for a certain amount of time. But when I got to the store they had so many different kinds of shoes, and none like the ones I was looking for, Converse like shoes, which frustrated me because I wanted to get what I wanted and I wanted them now. So I ended up not getting any shoes and just wearing the holey shoes until I had more time to look for the ones I really wanted. Like Postrel said, “people are in fact less likely to make a decision when they face too many alternatives.”

But on the other hand why do my grandparents, who live in a town of just a few hundred people, which only has a couple small antique stores and a convenience store, go on bus tours to malls in different parts of the state just to go shopping? Because they want choices. They want to be able to say ‘yes I want that shirt but not that one,’ even if they look exactly alike. They want variety. Like the author says, “people are different—in size and shape, in personality, in tastes, in values.” My grandparents, like most people, have different tastes than those who live in the town they live in, different from those people who own those shops that are in their town.

I too, like having many different choices. I love that I can go to the movie theatre and have the choice of two different romantic movies, a horror movie, a thriller, an action movie, and a comedy, all playing at the same time, but also throughout the day, sometime that would work for my schedule.

“Would you be able to go back to the world with fewer options?” I think that question kind of settles the whole articles argument for me. Even if I did think that choices were bad for us, I would never be able to go back to a time of one size fits all. We are so used to choice that going to one choice would just make everyone mad. So I think that we should just embrace the choices that we have and look at them as a good thing. What’s wrong with making up your own mind?

A Day Without Media

Media free day was quite the experience. I thought it was going to be a lot harder than it was.

I did my media free day Thursday. I chose that day because get to sleep in to 9:30am and then have class until 3:00pm and then work out. So that seemed to be the best day because it was a pretty busy day, but I had several breaks from class where I would usually watch TV or a movie, or play a game or something on the computer. But on that day I decided I should try to talk to people, but that was hard because everybody in the house were studying for tests, so I chose to read all the books I am supposed to be reading for classes but have not quite gotten around to yet. But that too was hard because my roommate was watching TV or on her computer most of the time, so I tried to go into the different lounges in the house but people were listening to music or watching TV or on their computers. So I decided the best place to go would be outside, so I chose to study on the benches outside the house, and that was surprisingly relaxing. But because I am very ADD it made the whole staying away from distractions so I don’t have to take my Adderal very difficult with all the people walking by and the cars and the random noises outside. I read a chapter and then got distracted by an adorable kitten that ran by, so I chased it behind the house and spent like three hours trying to catch it and its siblings. I caught them! And they weren’t so happy about being caught, but the girl kitten finally warmed up to me and I snuck them into my room and played with them for quite a while, and then after a while I decided that it wasn’t very nice to take the kittens away from their mommy so that evening I put them back outside and decided I would settle for just feeding them and having some outdoor cats. After that I went back to my room and bugged my roommate but she works crazy hours so she had to go to bed so she could be up at 3am for work, so I was yet again alone. I get lonely fast. So I tried to read again since my room was quite. That worked for an hour but then I got bored. So I saw the magazine on the side of my bed that I had just got in the mail, but then I realized that that was part of the media free day so I had to move that so I wouldn’t get tempted by that. After that I decided that since nobody was around to talk to I would play solitaire on the floor in my room, that was fun for about 30 minutes, but then I got bored yet again. And then it was time for my boyfriend and I to go on our nightly walk, so that wasted a couple hours because we walked around campus and talked and I took pictures of campus at night with the camera I have that I don’t usually use because it is not digital, but we usually do that so that wasn’t weird minus the camera part of the night. Then I decided that I would just take a shower and then go to bed early instead of watch a movie or talk to my family on IM.

The hardest part of the media free day was staying away from people who were using media, be it computer, music, TV, movies, etc. Everywhere I went there was someone using some sort of medium. The only way around that for me was to hide from it, I went outside instead of being inside where everyone was using media. I did not really miss e-mail or Facebook though I did have to catch myself from using it because it is habit. Another hard thing was the chair that we have in our room is positioned in a corner-ish place facing the big TV in our room, so when I sat there I was tempted to turn on the TV so that there was something going on in the room so I wouldn’t be so lonely. That was when I decided it would be best to leave my room, get away from all the different kinds of media I had laying around.

All in all it was much easier and more enjoyable than I would have ever expected. When you told us about the project I was not a big fan of the idea but now that I have experienced the day I respect the assignment much more and appreciate the challenge because I would never have done anything like this without being told to. I would never have known that I was capable of doing this. I always assumed that I incapable of going a day without my phone and computer and music and TV, but I did it and I am proud of myself and now I realize that it’s a good thing to do every now and again. I thought a lot more than I usually do, I thought through things that have been bothering me, and I prayed a lot more than I usually do. It was good for me all around and I would do it again sometime, but not for a long period of time, but maybe every couple of months or something like that.

Nicholas Carr

I cannot relate to Nicholas Carr when he says that he is having a harder time focusing on long articles and keeping his attention on something for a lengthy period of time because I have always had that problem. He said “I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text.” I disagree with him on the idea that the internet is making us more scatterbrained than we were before.

Carr says “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages.” But for me the internet has made it easier for me to focus on what I am reading because I can stay in one place and get all the information I need to complete the task at hand. If I don’t understand a word or an idea I can look it up on a search engine. I don’t have to get up and go find a book and then search in the book to figure it out. And usually by the time I do find that book I have already forgotten what I was looking up.

By staying in one place I have fewer distractions which make it easier for me to stay on the topic at hand. It makes it more efficient and less time consuming which also helps keep me focused, knowing that if I need to find something I can do it, do it fast, and do it right, where if I was at a library it would take me a long time to find what I needed, I would get distracted by the other books and want to read them, and when I did get the book I need, all the other information in it would distract from what I was originally doing, taking more of my focus away as well.

When I went to the library to write a paper on ethical absolutes and moral relativism I went knowing what I wanted to find, I had the call numbers, so all I had to do was go to the right stack and grab the book, but the problem was that when I got there, there were so many other books that looked interesting that I had to grab them too. So by the time I was done with getting the books I came for I ended up with twice as many books, which is all good but when you are on a deadline and trying to get the job done that causes problems and adds to the already constrained time. And because I got so many books I wasn’t able to finish all of them, only parts of them because I had to move on to the next class project.

I think that libraries are great in that you can get what you need and find all sorts of other things that interest you but you would never have known about, but it also causes you to not get as much done as you could with the internet. There is a time and place for internet research versus library research. It comes down to what works best for the individual. I work better having as few distractions as possible, which is why I stick to the internet, the single stop place. Carr would disagree with me, but I think that if he had grown up with the internet maybe he wouldn’t feel so against it.

Naomi Klein

In the interview with Naomi Klein about her book ‘No Logo’, which like it sounds basically is about the negative effects of branding on companies and us as humans. She says “branding is not about advertising, branding is about the end of advertising” and she says that products aren’t the ones being branded it is us, the humans, who are being branded (1). Also, she says that the companies have realized that it is more cost effective to just own the idea, patent, of the product, rather than owning that as well as the physical property, the factories and plants that actually make the product itself(6).

Is it really that bad that they have realized this and want to do the most cost effective thing for their company? Isn’t that just good business tactics? It’s inevitable that humans will take the easy way out. If there is an easier, cheaper way to do something and there are others who are willing to make that so, why not take advantage of that?

“Coke always understood that they would have higher profit margins if they didn’t own their bottlers, but actually just owned the recipe, the idea, the intellectual property. It’s intellectual property that matters (6).” Naomi would say that they aren’t being good companies; they aren’t taking care of all the constituents. But if there are people who work in these factories who need work and they are willing to work because these are the only jobs they can take on, is it really that bad to give them the job so what they get fed, and we get what we want too, cheaper goods?

I don’t believe that it is really that bad of a tactic. It may not be the best deal for the factory worker, but they do have a job which they wouldn’t have if the ‘big bad company’ didn’t run their business the way they do. She also says that class systems emerge due to this way of running things, but is that not inevitable as well? There are people who are born leaders and people who are born followers, that is how it has always been and how it will always be.

I have a friend who started his own business a few years ago, he sell clothes and jewelry. And he knows that the cheaper the products he gets the more he can mark them up to make a bigger profit. Because his store is a small boutique like store so he can mark stuff up more than if it was a chain store. He makes good money doing this, and the companies that he gets his products from are just factories in different countries, but he makes sure that they are not terrible factories where they don’t take care of their workers.

If he didn’t take any notice in how the workers were treated and how the factory was run then it would be a bad thing, but since he is aware of all the circumstances surrounding the products he purchases the more okay it is to do so.

In the end, I don’t think that we are really in such a rut as she seems to think that we are. People are going to do what they do and that is just part of life, and it is really not a bad thing like she seems to think it is. Whether or not we change the way branding and advertisement goes on, we will always have those who think of more efficient ways to do things, kind of like the ‘Go Green’ thing, using less oil, hurting the environment less.

Me and media

My experience with media has always been great. I have had a computer in my room since I was in third grade and I have had internet for about the same amount of time. Even though I had the option to be on it all the time I didn't really use it all that much, just to write papers and play that "Snake" game, which is still one of my favorites.

One year for Christmas I asked for a Nintendo and got a Play Station, because my dad said it was the next cool thing. He has always been up on the new electronics so I have always bee up on the new electronics too.

My parents never really cared what I watched on TV or at least they never told me I couldn't watch something, maybe because I was never really interested in watching the "bad" shows, but either way I always felt free to watch what I wanted. But I didn't really watch all that much TV, but I did watch two movies ALL the time, The Sound of Music and Grease, and of course the one show that I always had to see, Gumby.

Now I have a computer that I am on all the time, which may or may not be why I am debating whether I should be a comp. sci. major. I am typically manipulating photographs on Photoshop or playing N64 simulator games. But I watch some TV these days but not much. I do watch The Secret Life of the American Teenager and Reaper and the occasional Star Trek and Firefly. I love movies, any kind of movie. Grease is still my all time favorite movie.

I enjoy reading, but I don't have any particular genre or author that I really like, I just pick up books and if I like it I like it, it's as simple as that.