Enough options? Buying an MP3 player

I make no secret of the fact this blog title is taken from a chapter in a book that I am currently reading called "Enough" by John Naish. Naish is a writer/journalist from the UK and his book resonates with me as a call in the rich world to be able to evaluate what is enough. It is written from a secular and ecological perspective but as a Christian I have found myself wondering the same things both for our individual lives and national and global situations can we stop when we have enough. If we can meet everyone's reasonable needs is further "growth" really required? Of course politicians seem unable to ask this and marketing people would hate the idea that we could be sold something that served and therefore satisfied for life.

Several years ago a friends husband in the technology sector shared that mobile phone manufacturers deliberately only upgrade a feature or two at a time so that they can constantly promote the next model with some new "must have" feature. I remember my irritation and disbelief at a set of advertisements that ran in the UK some years ago promoting changing your glasses or your mobile phone because they questioned "are you embarrassed by them?". We need to be forced to be embarrassed by our functional products in order to jettison them and spend more money or accrue more debt to get something less uncool, which within months will already be out of date according to the marketeers. John Naish writes;

"In response we eagerly buy - but don't use - the extras. Nearly 60% of adults employ only half of their new functions, says one study, which says this is because only one in six of us bothers to read the manual. But perhaps this is pragmatism rather than sloth: another survey found that almost two-thirds of mobile phone owners use only four of the features - calls, text messages, alarm clock and camera. The rest is techno-flannel. More than a third of us don't even know if our mobile takes pictures."

Having gone out today to buy an MP3 player in order to play portable music and download podcasts to listen on the move I can relate to option overload, the mall had about 30 shops that would sell a product that could function as a MP3 player. First even before I ventured out to the mall I felt the need to check on line the differences between MP3 and MP4 so as to figure out if it was even worth buying an MP3 player at all as was it already outdated. I discovered, at least if I understood the techno-babble well enough, that MP4 is not a replacement or more updated version of MP3 instead MP3 is a compression file that takes out all the musical data that the human ear can't generally hear anyway but exists on those old fashioned CDs that I still buy, whilst MP4 is a media "container" that can transport several type of files including video. More knowledge, still can't say I was clear on the decision making but decided a 4GB MP3 would serve my purpose.

After about 10 shops I was exhausted with options and attention and I didn't even go in all of them. Unfortunately I had also realised that I could of course buy a different phone which plays MP3 files at close on the price of an MP3 player, but then I was faced with researching costs of extra expandable memory, whether I wanted a dual SIM, dual or quad band, QWERTY keyboard so texts don't take me an age to reply to and that was before I looked at makes. After an hour I was exhausted and defeated and no closer to what I thought would be a quick purchase of an audio playing device I left empty handed thinking with dread that I would have to return and then I would have to load all my songs onto this device which in all probability would be lost, stolen or obsolete before I got full enjoyment from it.

In a similar way to most people who have lived in smaller or less developed nations where supermarkets don't feel the necessity to stock a multitude of options I have generally found supermarket shopping in the UK both a delight in concept and an exhaustion in practice when I am home, there is TOO much choice. Naish summarises this,

"there are now nearly a thousand shampoo types on the world's shelves. And if you're thirsty, there are 27 different varieties of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola alone to choose from. That's a lot of ways to sell fizzy syrup. This mass outbreak of differentiation is why the average shopper spends more than 40 seconds weighing their options in the soft-drinks aisles, compared to 25 seconds seven years ago.

While we're doing all this agonising over infinitesimally small options, we may well get seduced into buying something else."

Meanwhile so many in the world have to take the only option available to them whether it is a safe one or a good one. The following is taken from an article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer this week.

Landslide also buries sisters' hope 

Judith Avila Taladok and her sister, Imelda, had agreed to open a food outlet in the school canteen where she teaches so they could keep Imelda's husband from working in the landslide-prone mining site in Pantukan town in Compostela Valley.

"Everything had been prepared," Taladok said. She said they had even raised fare money for Elmer Torred, who was hired as mine portal guard, "and were looking forward to his coming home."

But five days before Elmer was to come home on Jan. 10, a series of landslides occurred burying tunnels and the mining community in Sitio Diat Dos. His body, bloated and discoloured, was found among those by rescuers and brought to Mabini Funeral House on Friday.

Still grappling with her shock, Imelda recalled how she last spoke with Elmer through her cell phone at 2pm on Jan.4. Her husband said he had already advanced his pay and was sending it the following day to tide the family over.

He did not get the chance to send the money.

Imelda said Elmer left their house on Dec. 3 last year to work as a portal guard for Hexat mines "He did not get to spend Christmas and New Year with the family, but he promised to return on Jan 10 to be on my birthday Jan 12," she said.

After their talk Imelda received a call the next day from Elmer's friend, telling her to check if he was among the landslide survivors... Imelda found Elmer at the funeral parlour, his skin so dark and bloated. At first she did not believe it was him until she found the tattoo on his arm and the cyst near his foot."He had been complaining of that cyst and we were planning to go to the doctor to have it removed," she said.

Taladok said the family was aware that Elmer was risking his life working at the tunnel so they decided to start a food business at the canteen of the Talomo Elementary school to keep him far from danger.