IT SAYS a great deal about a country when our appliances are more cordial than our denizens. I have a Blu-ray player that insistently flashes ‘see you’ when you turn it off and gives you a hearty welcome when you switch it on. Compare this with your average shop-assistant: loathe to greet you, unaccountably smug and always texting – most likely the boy/girl they had behind the kebab shop the night before. Nevertheless, I have no interest in shoppies, but I do find the salutations of gadgetry quite interesting.
Why do manufacturers feel the need to make our laptops, phones and washing machines say hello? Give a product designer a digital display and they can’t help themselves but cram as much useless information in as possible; do they think we’re such petulant little twerps that we can’t to wait the scant few seconds for a device to start up without an inane greeting? Furthermore, they’re clearly ignorant of films such as ‘The Terminator’ – I guarantee you that the assent of the machines was started by one chirpy Blu-ray with aspirations.
I don’t think it’s a great selling point or a stroke of marketing genius, and I can’t imagine anyone was ever surveyed and clamoured for friendlier devices; surely you wouldn’t want taps asking you what you’ve got planned for the morning or light switches going over your dinner plans? No doubt the Japanese are working on very friendly machines. I think I would be satisfied with a machine that could teach better manners to the yoof, but, one supposes, the requisite ability to electrocute non-compliants would be a step in the Terminator direction. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my microwave has been reading Kierkegaard and is having a bit of an existential crisis.
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