A NEW SPECTRE is haunting the planet - technolust. We psychiatrists define it as the self-indulgent craving for attractive gadgets offering at best only marginal improvements over older devices but inducing fleeting, orgasmic, smug superiority in their possessors.
Technolust was thought to afflict only a small minority of the population - generally investment bankers with more money than sense and pony-tailed geeks with neither. But developments in the US have led scientists to fear that the condition is reaching epidemic proportions and affecting people regarded as immune to infection.
Evidence could be seen across the US last week. Victims queued for days outside retail stores bearing a mysterious fruit logo and outside premises owned and maintained by AT&T, hitherto regarded as a dumb, rather faceless phone company. When questioned, many sufferers gibbered about 'coolness', 'elegance' and 'a whole new interface metaphor, man'. It transpired that what these wretches were talking about was a mobile phone manufactured by a computer company. They were queuing to be the first to get this mythical device, possession of which would, they believed, increase their potency, enhance their street cred and lead to increased levels of sexual arousal in impressionable females. (Most technolust sufferers are males.) For this, they were prepared to shell out up to $600 and sign up to a two-year contract with a mobile network not famed for speed or customer service.
As ever, I blame the pushers, not the addicts. Epidemiologists say that the latest outbreak of technolust is entirely down to one man - Steven P Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc, who a few months ago unveiled this new object of desire at a conference of drooling addicts in San Francisco. The iPhone (for so it is called) would, he implied, redefine the mobile phone industry much as the iPod had redefined the music industry. It played music (though cannot store much compared with a standard iPod). It displayed album covers and allowed one to flip through them. It could take and display photographs. It could download and display web pages. It did email and Google maps and cool stuff like that. Oh, and you could make phone calls with it too. It didn't have a keyboard, just a shiny glass surface on which a virtual keyboard would appear when needed. And it would go on sale in the US on 29 June. The rest of Jobs's spiel was lost in the stampede as people went to reserve places in the queue.
Ads have been placed in Craigslist by people willing (for a fee) to act as placeholders in the queues outside Apple stores in the run-up to the launch. Those already in line, but farther back than they would have liked, could avail themselves of the services of 'Over Here, Jerks', which for $50 promised to create a diversion disruptive enough to drive off some queuers ahead of their clients. 'With our proprietary combination of stink sauces and dangerous exotic animals,' declared their advertisement (later removed) on the San Francisco Craigslist, 'two "attempts" in quick succession works over 60 per cent of the time - especially with nerds'.
By the time you read this, the first technolust victims will have had their orgasmic fix and may even be experiencing feelings of anti-climax. They will be reflecting that they had to sign up to a two-year contract with AT&T, which doesn't even give them 3G connections, and have read the small print stipulating a $175 penalty for getting out of it. They will also be realising that, while the wi-fi capability is wonderful, it costs a fortune to access most wi-fi hotspots. And that 4 or 8 GB of memory doesn't let them take their entire music libraries with them on the move. And that texting on a virtual keyboard is trickier than with real buttons. And that replacing the battery involves sending the phone back to Apple. And so on.
But these are rational considerations - and technolust has nothing to do with rationality. It's all about instant gratification and the absurd belief that devices can make us happy. We are all, as Keynes famously said, the slaves of some defunct philosopher. In the case of the iPhone, the sage is Heidegger, who said that 'technology is the art of arranging the world so that we don't have to experience it'.
Amen to that.
john.naughton@observer.co.uk
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