Enough of the cliches and back to the topic.
Our growth and expansion has created expectations that are simply not realistic. We expect the power to always be on, that gas will always be cheap, food will always be on grocery shelves, and to own the latest techno gizmo. People born in the 80's and 90's simply have no clue about how hard things can really be for the world, country, or individual. This is especially true if they have never travelled outside of the US. So when the economy takes a dip or gas goes up by $2.00, we of course think the world is about to end. It breaks the mold and challenges our expectations.
So let's put things in perspective to illustrate the point. Take a look at the table below as it describes how long it has taken for 1/2 of the US population to adopt new technologies.
So 100 or so years ago, it took 71 very long years for the telephone to be adopted by 1/2 of the country! Stop and think about that for a minute. Seventy one years -- that is a life time. IPODs are on the other end of the spectrum -- they were adopted in 4 short years.
Chew on this for a while. Come back to it and chew some more.
We live in a time of instant gratification that feeds the "me too" mentality. Don't get me wrong, we should be proud of these achievements and I am not advocating we return to the horse and buggy. But let's re-adjust our outlook on things and not be lemmings and buy into mass hysteria about the first thing we hear about the state of affairs...
3 comments:
While I still don't like paying $3.50 per gallon for gas, I agree with what you're saying. We live in a free market (mostly) and we should expect fluctuations based on demand. With China demanding more and more oil and the price going up accordingly, maybe America should take a harder look at nuclear energy. Lets all cling to our guns and pray about it.
That's the nature of people...they love to complain. They also love change... even if it's for the worse. They get complacent too quickly.
I don't know how i missed this one!
I was in college as an advertising major studying the ipod model for all 4 of those years that it took for half the US to run to the shelves and scoop them up. (I admit, I have one too)
It came up in EVERY class! It's what every other company is now trying to emulate. With tons and tons more image marketing coming ou way, we are going to start seeing this trend in all kinds of product categories, not just tech/electronics. Every year, apple revamps their whole line of mp3 players and a lot of people wouldnt be caught dead with the "old" ipod (soooo last year!). So yes, we are spoiled.
The part of America that has enough expendable income is giving less and less and spending more and more. Americans today give way less per capita to charity/non-profits today than during the GREAT DEPRESSION!
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