Desire, Technology, and Jesuits

I met a young Polish Jesuit Brother the other day, who is learning Mandarin at the language institute where I am taking Taiwanese classes. He has an effervescent personality, and has learned an amazing amount of Chinese in a short period of time. He said that he was saving money to buy an iPod Touch. The Jesuits give him an allowance of about 3000 NTD (about 100 USD) a month, and he said that if he saved all that money for 3 months, he would be able to buy an iPod Touch. He started walking instead of taking the subway to class, in order to save money.

I've been listening to a bunch of technology podcasts lately. I like listening to them because I've inherited a love of gadgets and technology from my dad, and, for the most part, the podcasts consist of smart people talking about fun/nerdy topics, with informed, (mostly) sharp analysis.

But what makes me uncomfortable about tech podcasts, and the tech industry in general, is the never ending cycle of consumption and the creation of consumer desire. Pundits hype up a new product, leading to intense consumer demand, a new wave of consumption happens, repeat in the next quarter. Apple has really mastered this strategy in the past 10 years, and they're probably at the top of the creation of consumer demand and desire game. The underlying ideological assumption that justifies these never ending consumer cycles is that this type of cutthroat competition drives newer cycles of innovation, which leads to better and cheaper products, which leads to a rise in standards of living, and a rising GDP for everybody. Hooray.

I decided to give my old, first generation iPod Touch to the Polish Brother. It was a first generation iPod touch, and I had used it for a good three years, before recently getting an iPhone, so it was collecting dust on my desk. The Polish Brother was ecstatic when he received it. The next time I saw him, he had already downloaded the Chinese-English dictionary software, Pleco, and various other apps that he could use to read Polish books. He was clearly a savvy technology user who had done his research and knew how to use the device, right off the bat. It turns out he wanted an iPod Touch just so that he could use Pleco and not have to lug a huge dictionary around with him. The fact that it was three year-old, "outdated" technology didn't bother him one bit.

He excitedly told me, "Now I can give the money I've saved to somebody who needs it!"

That one line has stuck with me and provided me with so much inspiration -- much more so than the countless hours of technology punditry I've listened to in the past month.