The way they make us live

We live in an ever-changing environment and everyday we learn new things, which change our perceptions or generally alter the way we view previously conceived ideas. The internet, mobile technology, satellite televisions and many of the wonderful advancements of our age just help to connote the fact that times will keep changing as long as technology keeps advancing. We as a society have been slowly changing to fit in our ever changing world, for example growing up I played an Atari with 16bit graphics and used to stay up at night dreaming about the levels and game play, then at about my seventh birthday my brothers got a Nintendo entertainment system. Just as I was learning the ins and outs of Mario, the Sega genesis was introduced (about a year after the NES). We learnt the new rules of game play and the amazing new "3rd" button on the control pad, this then spawned into a love for Sega which gave us the Sega mega drive. But before our love for sonic was well placed we got the super Nintendo and once again we didn’t complain but just asked our parents to buy it for us....by age 10 we had the Playstation and N64....then we (and I mean every family that wanted peace in their homes) got the dream cast. The game play changed a little with every console and the time between improvements reduced drastically. So to sum up my point I bought an Xbox 3yrs ago and am now saving up for a Playstation 3 which virtually has a life of its own, so not only was technology advancing but so was the way we think...if you give a child of today a game from the Atari age they would ask if your insulting their intelligence. Games today don’t only come in three dimensions, high definition but the tasks are getting more and more complex and challenging so to keep up, our brains have to advance in its way of thinking.

This is just and example to show how as technology improves, so does general societies way of thinking. Consumers being the general public watch satellite TV on their high definition 24 inch screens and surf the ever changing and advancing world wide web on hybrid computers. So to keep up the product sellers spend more time advancing the products on amazing adverts all over the place, bombarding us with subliminal sales pitches on what we need and have to get in order to fit in our world today. Of course we do all fall pray to these well planed out attacks on human emotion and our general psyche but we never feel bad when we have money and have bought things we think we need.

The mobile phone market was a drastic change in our lives that we all took and still take for granted...literally 10 years ago about 80 percent of the people that have phones today walked around with phone books and change in their pockets but now we cant even live a couple days with out calling the guy in the room next door to turn the noise down or sending a text we just could have easily said wit 3 seconds of credit. Advancements like this change entire countries one person at a time and average Joes never even take a second to think about it....we just take it as things are.

And that is what most advertising firms hope will happen because if we realize we don’t need half the things we long for, then a lot of people will lose their jobs and ways of life.

Another recent change is the desensitizing effect of television and movie content. A wile ago showing a female nipple on the screen was set for after 10pm and the amount of blood allowed on the screen at any one time was measured and seriously taken into account. But today only gratuitous sex scenes are being checked....the way the beautiful cheerleader is killed at the end of scene three doesn’t matter any more just as long as the audience get a kick out of it. I was even amazed when watching an animated movie I burst out laughing at some sexual innuendo between the two lead characters (mice, ogres, donkeys etc) it slowly occurred to me that my little cousins weren’t laughing and where now asking me to explain the joke...I had to make something up because I didn’t want my aunt calling me up and asking why I told her 6 year old what spooning was (and if you don’t know, than don’t worry about it).

People today go out and buy things to enhance their ways of life (like dish washers, vacuum cleaners etc) by taking out a lot of the menial tasks, but there are also things which now have become a must have (mobile phones, personal computers, internet connections etc) so as to feel like regular members of society. Then there are the things that you don’t have to have, but no home would be complete with out (T.V., cable/satellite connection, DVD players, games consoles etc) these help people kill hour upon hour of time which seems like the norm in our day and age. The average perception of an American is a big, fat guy who loves Mc Donalds and the sci-fi channel, but this perception comes from where? TV, movies, novels etc. I see it as a country with almost everyone having access to all the technological advancement of our age, they have nothing else to worry about so they “veg” out on the sofa and come up with new problems like there are actually people who are afraid of keys, really….keys?

So generally the recent developments in society today have spawned a lot of different ways of thinking, acting and living. People today expect the things they buy to improve their lives, make them healthier, happier, better looking, more popular etc. so the product creators and sellers have to spend more time making their products more appealing. We the masses then have to adapt with the times, so in essence the advertisers create a vision of what we should want and need and we as consumers believe their predictions and try to live accordingly. Its complicated I know, but I don’t make the rules, I just thought you should know.