Why are modern males so obsessed with their cell phones, notebooks, desktop PCs, iPods and all these other electronic gadgets?

Some time ago I had a short look at the Ladies and their relationship to technology (Girly tech and why pink is for pussy). I think it’s only fair to look at myself and the Technolust of my gender.

Modern Rituals

When you go out for dinner with some of your friends or co-workers everybody puts their cell phone or other clunky digital objects on the table.

Woman then just start their normal conversation, Guys have to pause for some minutes and talk about their digital penises on the table. Digital masturbation at it’s best.

You actually can blame Star Trek for cell phones - it’s inventor Martin Cooper started the nightmare after watching Captain Kirk.

Knowing your digital Penis

Let’s look back 20 years. Would you have talked about your typewriter in the same way like you do about your shiny Apple Notebook? Would you have known the memory capacity of your answering machine like most guys know the resolution, interfaces and all the other unnecessary information of their cell phone?

I admit that we males always had that odd tendency to memorize odd stuff like football results or all cars produced 1963 by Ford or some other rubbish.

Males seem like to drill into endless details about technical or sports events, just like woman love social pr0n either reality or TV based.

Plus digital gadgets offer us guys the chance to play god and have digital slaves work for us. Plus “tinkering” with “stuff” is certainly a male domain. Sometimes really wonder why nature has given us the capability to get excited about pimping a car or configuring our computers for endless hours. To be honest all these things make no more sense to us than it does to woman, but we love them and make our inner penises grow hard and longer.

Only guys built floppy disk raid arrays - because they can!

Male & Female thinking?

We can blame this on male thinking - or better say brain structure. The old theory goes like that: Guys are supposed to be left-brainers - logical thinkers, good in math, an excellent sense of directions and more analytical.

Rubbish. More and more research shows that the brain itself is not purely male or female. It mostly depends how you train and use your brain. We have female jet pilots and mathematicians. There is a nice test at the BBC website, where you can find out if your brain is more male or female.

I think it’s about time to get rid of these old ideas and labels.

So if our male brains are not hardwired to love gadgets, so maybe our love to techno-gimmicks is related to Sexuality and Social-Biology.

Let’s have a look at the different “advantages” gadgets or Technolust provide …

Sure hot chicks may dig hot notebooks - but this might not include lame notebook owners.

Advantage: New Gadgets make you sexy?

Sex always sells, especially to insecure young and old males. What has worked for the automobile industry for decades will also work for high-tech-gadgets: hot chicks carefully stroking cell phones and other shiny expensive gadgets.

But looking back at the automobile - impressive gadgets will help you to catch some woman? On first glance this theory seems right: guys with Rolex watches and flashy sports cars got all the girls? Right?

Then all the Nerds with quad-pumped PCs and an extra 16 GByte of RAM should also get all the Girls? Right?

Wrong.

Males always loved to show their social status with the help of status symbols and expensive accessories like sport cars and blonde hookers. But this simply does not work in the modern world of digital gadgets.

The most expensive Dell XPS notebook won’t get you laid, neither will the newest iPhone in your pocket.

But still: millions of males lust for this objects like for yummy naked females …

But Gadgets won’t give you any advantage in the hunt for the best mate or getting sex. A big car or even better a huge mansion are simply better expressions of your social status and wealth - and appeal more to the female nesting instinct. Even when your server farm in Bangalore is way more expensive - but it’s symbolism and practicality leaves much to be desired.

Classical Macho look - perfectly imitated by a gay person.

The classic Macho knew how to work that symbolism and the status symbols to get the girls. Nerds simply don’t.

Although dramatically undersexed - the modern Nerd shares hardly shares any attributes or insights with the classic Rolex wearing Macho.

While a Macho is in love with himself and female genitalia, a Nerd hardly has that egocentric attitude nor gynecological knowledge.

Modern Nerd look - quite successful these days …

A Nerd might love his 1978 Luke Skywalker action figure or be passionate about how to configure a Linux Server properly, but he isn’t be a dating magician nor has he the proper breeding desire.

Reality TV has already shown us that Geeks can hardly been taught to mate properly: Beauty and the Geek.

Computer literacy will be a normal skill in a few years. We are just living in a time of transit from no computers in our life - to a total information society.

Advantage: Being highly Computer Literate

Nerdism has changed our culture tremendously in the last twenty years. So the Nerds have taken over our world and digital products rule our everyday life: computers, the Internet and cell phones …

Even everyday objects like washing machines or bloody toasters are high tech machines. Just buying a simple ticket involves a complicated computer and confusing displays to watch and buttons to press.

There is no escape.

So being computer-literate and understanding technology is an important skill. High-Tech-Jobs pay well and there is a high demand for people with decent computer skills even for normal office jobs - since you need to be able to operate some Office software, write eMail and loads of other Information Technology.

So we all have been transformed during the last twenty years - we all got a big more nerdy ourselves.

So understanding technology and LIKING is no longer  an odd thing to do - but a survival skill for any modern homo digitalis.

But buying loads of Gadgets is not the same as being computer literate - it just shows that you have too much money. It’s like buying a new sports car - it neither makes you an engineer nor a good race driver.

Computer Literacy comes from learning, not from buying new stuff.

Just wondering: did this gadget also improve the quality and content of your conversations - or are you still just talking crap on your cell phone?

Advantage: Vorsprung durch Technik - new technology makes your more competitive?

Is this marketing slogan from BMW (Advantage through Technology) the only advantage left for Technolust?

But let’s be honest: my writing really hasn’t improved since I have bought my first copy of WordStar 1987 or does the call quality between a cheap Nokia cell phone and an expensive iPhone really justify hundreds of Euros difference?

In most cases the technological leap forward or advantage is minimal. Especially buying the newest gadgets is rather a nerve wrecking experience, instead of a big advantage. Most new tech has it’s serious flaw. I still remember when I experienced the first time a cell phone crash - what a stupid thing. My old analog phones NEVER crashed or needed a software upgrade to work properly.

So technical progress is often overpriced and NOT reliable. New gadgets are often a nightmare to use and take a lot of workarounds to make them work anyway.

This is not Technolust - this is Techoschmerz.

No technology without errors. That’s Fun?

Advantage: It’s cool and fun to use!

Modern consumer electronics have to be blessed with cooleness to sell well - because marketing and different design is in most cases the only thing that separates different brands from each other. Many notebooks or cell phones have the same features and offer the same processing power or memory. In many cases their internal parts are absolutely identical. So their inner workings are hardly the reasons for buying them.

Good product design can really make a difference between a good electronic gadget and a unusable one.

But that’s the very catch: one would expect that bloody thing to work properly anyway!

Plus I don’t want my cell phone to be “fun” to use? Can anyone please explain what that stupid phrase means anyway? Any gadget should do it’s job without standing in my way either by being awkward or terrible cool. And usually “coolness” is always a distraction from the real job.

Too much technology is too “cool” these days, instead of being easy to use and simple in it’s design. Instead we get loads of “coolness” that confuses us with unwanted features, questions and additional problems.

Why do I need a composer in my cell phone to write my own ring tones? I am not Ludwig van Nokia.

Gadgets are not toys, they are usually tools and machinery supposed to do specific work for us. The more “fun” is in the design, the less the job gets done.

So extra “cool” and “fun to use” gadgets are a waste of time.

A Grill for REAL MAN!

What’s left for improving our Penises?

So far we have ruled out any sexual, social advantages or practical advantages for buying overpriced Gadgets.

That leaves only rather negative reasons for Techlust: social & sexual pressure.

Consumerism has changed how we define ourselves. While woman have mostly to follow certain beauty standards to be judged pretty or adorable, for guys it’s still a lot about status symbols.

It’s all perfectly summed up on the marketing slogan “For Real Man only!”

In an age where most man have no real challenges and there are no longer any rituals to prove yourself as a guy (like in many primitive culture) we only use consumer goods as symbols for our manhood.

But the classical power and social symbols of manhood have been replaced my meaningless digital gadgets and trinkets.

Let’s talk some truth here …

While a sword & horse - or car & house had some practical value, our digital status symbols are rather pathetic. Our digital penises can’t cut down enemies or drive our beloved woman to a nice place outside the city.

Instead we have “fun” by taking badly lit snapshots, checking our eMails in airport toilets or showing off our newest ringdings or crazy clips from the Intranets to our friends.

The technological pressure “to upgrade your life” is more about following the crowd then really having a practical, sexual or social advantage.

It’s mostly to calm down our ego’s and tell ourselves that our digital penis has at least as much memory and processing as your best friends “Schwanz”.

For that peace of mind are we willing to run with the crowd and buy the digital penis that is currently the best one on sale.