But 100,000 means different things to different people. For Apple, it means the company can more effectively position the App Store as the standard, increasing the legitimacy of the iPhone brand by forcing other smart phones to exist in eternal comparison to it. For consumers, 100,000 means choice in the most capitalistic form of the word — choice between a virtual zipper or a virtual stapler, a virtual beer-counter or a virtual baby shaker. For the more diligent of consumers, 100,000 means sifting through that same mire, finding the gems within the muck that are worth the price attached to them. 100,000 also evokes a certain sense of impossibility. It would cost about $32,000 for one to purchase every single iPhone app; even then, the iPhone can only house 148 apps concurrently, so the impossibility is twofold. 100,000, it would seem, lacks the universality that its status as a number might lead us to suggest.
Indeed, the now famous (and popularly maligned) quip, “There’s an app for that,” gets closer and closer every day to becoming a truism. There is an iPhone app that tracks Swine Flu cases, an app that aims to help people get over their fear of flying, and even an app that helps men track the menstrual cycles of their girlfriends. Many with attention spans greater than my own have espoused the wonders of the niche iPhone app, so I’ll spare you the drudgery. But I will say this: the iPhone app store functions by filling voids that you didn’t know you had.
That is not to say that this is particularly unique. The whole of capitalism operates in much the same vein. Vendors function and sustain themselves via convincing consumers that a certain product, just by its sheer novelty, will change their lives, ostensibly for the better. Technology seems particularly prone to this tendency. It’s one marked by jargon, buzzwords and gloss. A new computer is a new opportunity, each successive iteration filling in the gaps left by its predecessor, each a chance for manufacturers to deliver on their perpetual promises. It’s founded on engineered obsolescence, of both the systemic and stylistic kind.
At the risk of undermining my own integrity, let’s consider The Onion’s Dec. 3 coverage of the release of a “new device.” Nearly reading as a template for the release of any new gadget — seriously, plug in iPhone wherever “device” appears — the article manages to capture, in less than 600 words, the crux of technological fetishism. Spokespeople, consumers and authors alike indifferently rattle off the features of the “new device.” The consumers, in particular, elicit the most chagrin: “The new device brings me satisfaction” said one interviewee, and it is at this point that we realize the problem with the article, the point where its satire strikes the reader most soundly, is in the realization that these consumers don’t sound like people at all. Instead they sound programmed, not too far removed from the devices themselves.
It’s hard to argue that any one consumer operates in a mode where they see their endless streams of purchases as a limitless pursuit of desires — but in a certain sense that is exactly what is happening. Web sites like Gizmodo and Engadget feel at points almost pornographic; in reading these sites, it’s rarely long before you witness the word “sexy” applied to the latest Apple release. Moments like that make me cringe. We at times seem to be caught in a loop of new devices breeding new desires, points where our desires cross and become muddled. Some notable journalist, whose name has since been lost to the voids of time and my memory, once compared the Xbox 360’s distinctive curvature to that of the average female. There was, he thought, something beautiful, even sexy, in the elegance of the Xbox 360’s shape, evidence of design mimicking life.
The comparison is evocative of a certain kind of juxtaposition popular among adolescent boys with unfettered access to the Internet. It’s achieved by taking a woman, stripping her of her clothing, and covering up any and all nether regions with video game components — controllers, consoles, games. Something compelling is created in this combination, an indescribable satisfaction obtained via the substitution of nudity with technology, one fetish taking the place of another. It’s confounding, fascinating and, on some level, disturbing. Where sex meets technology we find uncertain ground, a place that challenges our distinction between our definition of desire and the devices we direct it at. That new iPhone may be sexy, but it certainly doesn’t know it.