Just what we need – another reason to upgrade our televisions and create more electronic waste! Though, at least this TV will save some space in the landfill once it’s thrown out. It’s the new LG super flat flatscreen. It is less than 7 millimeters thick. There’s no official name for it. Just think of it as the skinny jeans of the TV world:
Nothing like hearing a review of an old Sony Walkman from a 13-year-old kid to make a Generation Xer feel realllllly old. After trying a Walkman for a week (in lieu of an iPod), the modern teenager conclusion is this:
Throughout my week using the Walkman, I came to realise that I have very little knowledge of technology from the past. I made a number of naive mistakes, but I also learned a lot about the grandfather of the MP3 Player. You can almost imagine the excitement about the Walkman coming out 30 years ago, as it was the newest piece of technology at the time.
Perhaps that kind of anticipation and excitement has been somewhat lost in the flood of new products which now hit our shelves on a regular basis.
Personally, I’m relieved I live in the digital age, with bigger choice, more functions and smaller devices. I’m relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born, as I can’t imagine having to use such basic equipment every day.
Having said all that, portable music is better than no music.
Geez oh pete. I’m a dinosaur! I still have a Walkman lying around as well as a portable CD player! And those CD players are actually bigger than the tape players.
I’ve kept a Walkman because I do have some cassettes I like to listen to once in a while. (At this point, mostly self-help things, as my audio as moved to MP3 for the most part.) The “Walkman” in question is actually a Panasonic cassette player, a “sports” version, in bright yellow with black rubber grips. It’s one of those you could throw into a pool and it would still work.
So I guess I have some nostalgia for those rugged Walkmans and clones that were designed to withstand places like the beach and your neighborhood pool. iPods are almost too slick and technological. I’ve dropped that darn Panasonic cassette player 50 times or more and it still plays 15 years later. I seriously doubt my iPod would survive such a beating.
So should we just chuck our old electronic portable devices out the window and fill up more landfills? Or gift them to our progeny, giving them a taste of electronics gone by?
It seems that Americans still care more about convenience than the planet. A law banning phosphate-based dishwashing soap has led residents of Spokane to dash across state lines to smuggle in “bootleg” detergents:
Real estate agent Patti Marcotte of Spokane stocks up on detergent at a Costco in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and doesn’t care who knows it.
“Yes, I am a smuggler,” she said. “I’m taking my chances because dirty dishes I cannot live with.”
Because of course, in the hierarchy of American values, dirty dishes are oooh so much worse than the resultant dirty lakes and streams that result from phosphates.
The “green” movement has been extremely trendy in recent years, trendy to the point of overexposure. With all the little green labels popping up everywhere, you have to start wondering what’s really green and what’s just green-washing. You know the movement has gotten a bit shallow when the worst of our cultural celebrity obsession merges with environmental news in the form of “green celebrity” sites like Ecorazzi.
But my admittedly tentative prediction is that such celebrity-focused media is going to lessen in coming years rather than strengthen. In my short almost 40 years of life, I’ve seen America turn from a relatively balanced culture into one where tabloids have taken over. We didn’t have “paparazzi” in the 1980s. This all started happening in the 90s. The mindless celebrity-obsessing seems to have hit an all-time high, and I can’t help but wonder (and hope) if we’ve hit the peak of it.
How does this relate to the green movement?
Back to Reality…
My feeling overall is that we’re coming off a collective high that is landing in one huge hangover. We had the dot-com bubble and then the housing bubble. People thought they sky was the limit and they could make money on doing practically nothing (flipping stocks, flipping houses).
We saw this represented in our television and media. We have an entire cable channel, E! Entertainment, devoted to mindless hours of celebrity focus. Shows such as “Dirty Sexy Money” were launched. Reality TV wasn’t so much about reality as it was about fantasy.
We obsessed over Britney, Paris, and what clothes people were wearing on the red carpet. This is easy to do when the money is everywhere and we’re collectively gorging on our own materialistic feast.
In the midst of this brainless cultural orgy, some positive things did emerge. Certain celebrities, such as Leonardo di Caprio and Ed Begley, decided to use their name power to help the environment. Meanwhile, Al Gore hit us with an Inconvenient Truth.
This was all well and good. But then the paparazzi mentality took over. Green was the “in” thing, and all the tabloids and celebrity news shows started jumping on it. It seemed to be an antidote to the ridiculous, over-the-top focus on clothes and hair – now we’re focusing on how green the clothes are! Hemp is in, polyester out! Prius in, BMW out!
Here’s my concern. Anything that becomes a trend is likely to become not a trend after a certain saturation point. I fear that environmental awareness may end up being thrown out with the celebrity focus. I definitely feel that America is going to be less interested in frivolous stuff if our recession deepens. Who has the stomach to watch a rich heiress or a Britney-of-the-moment blow her fortune on late night escapades and neurotic head-shaving sessions when your 401K becomes worthless overnight?
Some might suggest we’ll want more escape, but I’d submit that while we may want escape, it won’t be towards focusing on the rich. Candace Bushnell’s new television series Lipstick Jungle was heralded as the next Sex and the City, and show bombed. Having watched a few episodes, I can only say that there’s nothing much appealing about a rich, whiny, privileged woman whose main concern is whether her handsome husband or their nanny has to take care of the kids the night she’s going to an elite soiree.
I feel we’ll be seeing television go back to the real instead of the fake – don’t be surprised if we don’t suddenly see a return of gritty, 70s style shows. (I’m placing my bets on a recreation of the Waltons, a show about a family struggling during the Great Depression.)
In this economic environment, you will perhaps see celebrities shift their focus from the environment to more pressing situations, such as the growing tent cities near major US urban areas.
Green Consumerism
For regular Americans, being green has already been too expensive and will only become more so as inflation rises and belts tighten. Who has money for solar panels when unemployed? Who can afford to upgrade the car to a hybrid when the mortgage can’t be paid?
Organic food is already more expensive (sometimes two or three times) than standard food. A shirt made from organic cotton might cost $100 whereas the same one in regular cotton would cost $50.
But see, here we come to the crux of the problem: Too much of the environmental movement has focused on consumerism geared towards the affluent.
My being green should not depend on my purchase of an expensive eco-friendly yoga mat!
I do notice a lot of urban liberals poo-pooing places like Wal-Mart, saying that people shouldn’t shop there and that they should go to a boutique local shop instead. OK, that’s all fine and dandy if you are making a lot of money, but please don’t tell someone who is just trying to scrape by and take care of their family that they should spend $200 on a dress when they can get something comparable for $20 at the big box store.
People are by all rights practical, and when they have the money to spend on nicer things they will, otherwise, they’ll go for what they can afford. Period. You can’t squeeze more juice than what’s already in the lemon.
Thus, I feel, with belts tightening, people will be less inclined to buy the more expensive eco or organic versions of products, whether it’s in the form of soap or sofas.
Where We Can Make Progress
I’ve felt for a long time that America needs to return to the value of frugality. When you have less money, you become more frugal and creative with what you have. So instead of rampant consumerism where people will run out and by huge McMansions and newer and bigger large screen TVs every other year, we may see the following:
As such, I think the environmental movement would be best served by finding ways to help people save money while helping the planet, rather than spending more money buying pricey eco-products. With such a shift, being more green could become a more permanent way of life rather than just the latest fad.
I’ve actually been using a Hipster PDA (or hPDA) for my organizing needs for some time now. As much as I love computers, I have never been able to deal with electronic to-do lists. My Hipster PDA fits into my purse and I use it to write random notes, to-dos, and ideas for my business. It also has a calendar, which I make manually by printing out a template onto cards that I cut to index size. (I still don’t know why some smart person hasn’t started selling pre-printed Hipster PDA index cards…on recycled paper, of course!)
I’ve thus avoided the smartphone mania for some time. I did used to have a Palm device – actually, a Handspring Visor – and actually, I still own it. I can’t sync it anymore (serial connection) but I do have a backup module in case it needs a reset. Since it takes batteries I sometimes like to play solitaire on it, or the extremely addictive Dope Wars.
But alas, I needed a way to get email instantly and have a more robust calendar for the yoga classes I am teaching. I got a BlackBerry Curve for Christmas, and it’s fabulous. It has:
A 2.0 megapixel camera with flash
A video camera
An MP3 player (with an iPod-like interface)
Push email
Calendar/contacts
GPS system with voice navigation
Full keyboard
Games (I even found a free version of Dope Wars for BlackBerry!)
The default browser isn’t so hot, but if you download Opera Mini, you will get a fantastic mobile browsing experience, complete with easy zoom functionality.
Screw the iPhone – I love having a real, full keyboard. Touchscreen does not do it for me, never mind that it’s probably easier to break. (By the way, what was wrong with the Palm stylus system anyway? I actually got good at Graffiti and miss using it!)
The downside to the BlackBerry is that if you don’t have Microsoft Outlook, your option for syncing your calendar and contacts is Google. Google is starting to scare me – are they going to turn out to be the younger, trendier version of Microsoft? I hate having to put all my info online like that but I’m not buying Outlook. (And it does work pretty well.)
Problem is – there is no way to sync your to-do lists in Google. Once again, I am back to my Hipster PDA as the best, most convenient solution for my to-do lists and brainstorming sessions.
Is it environmentally bad to be using up paper like that? Should I just be typing it all in? If someone would come up with PDA that used a stylus with handwriting recognition, maybe I would. Well, I guess I could get a tablet PC one of these days…though buying a very resource-intensive computer just to save a few trees does not seem to be a good trade, environmentally speaking.
I guess I’ll be sporting both the Curve and the hPDA…at least we women get to carry purses around so it’s no big deal at any rate.
The green trend has now hit web browsers – you can download the free Flock Browser Eco-Edition here. The browser comes pre-set with links and feeds from various eco-websites, and they give 10% of the search engine proceeds from the browser use to an environmental organization voted on by users.
I downloaded the browser and installed it (it does come in a version for Linux), but I’m not sure if I would use it that much. Some of the eco-trendy sites that come pre-loaded I don’t like particularly much. The one that wins my top “Eco-Irony Award” would be Sprig, which claims to be about the environment while pushing mindless consumerism. (No, you don’t really need to get a new pair of designer expensive “environmentally friendly” shoes when the ones you already have work just fine.) Ecorazzi, which focuses on green celebrities, seconds my list of mindless eco-trendy consumerist crap.
So while I feel that the idea behind Flock’s eco-browser is a good one, I am personally not thrilled about the trend towards corporatey, consumerist websites that play off the green trend but are in reality more of the same consumerism that got us into this environmental mess in the first place.
I have no idea why anyone would want to buy a car that can’t fit into a standard parking spot. But I guess some people have issues with their egos. If you hate Hummers (like I do), you will enjoy this site:
The Sierra Club has a quiz on the energy efficiency of various television technologies. You can take the quiz here. (I got a high score even though I guessed on many of the answers.)
I was interested to find out that my guess that it’s better to keep my old CRT than trade it in for a large widescreen was right – keeping the CRT is probably the more eco-thing to do. Why? (more…)
I just bought my first printer in nine years. Yes, that’s right, nine years. When I say I am anti-consumerism, I really mean that. If something works, I don’t just throw it out to get something new. I have a perfectly good 1994 HP LaserJet that still does the bulk of my printing. In 1999, I bought an Epson color inkjet. That was the last printer I purchased. I wasn’t using it that much, but it, along with an old printer/scanner combo a friend gave me, finally bit the dust.
So I went to Costco and got a new Canon all-in-one printer for around $100 with tax. This thing is amazing. It prints, it scans, it copies, and it faxes. And excuse me for sounding like an old fart here, but back in the day I used to own a printer, a copier, a fax machine and a scanner. Trying to find homes for these items in my then one-bedroom apartment was a challenge. My home copier was actually situated on the top of my fridge. (more…)
I’m always interested in new ways of doing business that don’t involve making new stuff. Here’s one interesting application of the Internet: Setting up sites where people can swap goods instead of throwing them away or purchasing new products. This lends itself quite well to things like books and CDs.
One such site that I am currently checking out is Bookins.com, which gives you points for each book you offer for trade and then charges a flat $4.49 shipping fee for books you receive. (You don’t have to pay to ship books, just to receive.)
Of course, you could just use your local library too. But some books are good to keep around as reference. And yes, we all look toward the day when books will be entirely electronic instead of made from paper…and then sadly we’ll have the book publisher equivalent of the RIAA on our asses for book file sharing. For that reason alone, perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I’d like to keep paper books around.
