They queued all night in the rain outside the Apple store in Covent Garden, fenced in by crush barriers like football crowds. It was the same at other Apple stores across the country, as the iPhone 5s was launched on a public carefully worked up to a froth of anticipation. A few days earlier, Grand Theft Auto V, released after a meticulous campaign of titillation including the statutory moral panic from the Daily Mail, exceeded its first week’s sales projections on the first day. The products may be among the best of their kind, but this kind of big-sales excitement needs a huge, sophisticated and elaborate marketing exercise to get it going, a whole backstory of endeavour – like the tale of the pursuit of perfection, of an obsession with design and function that for Apple was embodied in Steve Jobs. The team that developed GTA in Dundee lacked the black polo-necked sleekness of Jobs, so they brought in Max Clifford to promote stories about the game’s badness. Contrast with humble sales of philosophy books this week. And yet there was more to it than people queueing to pay £709 for a phone. This was the week when two Russians fell out over Kant and one shot the other, happily not in a life-threatening way. Google executives are at work on designing educational programmes as addictive as GTA. Ideas still provoke passion, technology is already getting in there. Only a matter of time then for queues round the block for the next philosophy release. It’ll be a lot cheaper than an iPhone. (The Guardian)
Dieser witzige Artikel aus dem Guardian wird einige Leser zum Schmunzeln bringen, zudem wird der Philosophen-Fraktion der Manafonistas Genüge getan, da wir nun allmonatlich ein Philosophie-Buch mit einer Besprechung vorstellen, in bester Gesellschaft des Albums, der Reissue, und des Thrillers des jeweiligen Monats. Und, nein, keine geisteswissenschaftliche Arroganz im Spiel, mein neues IPhone 5s wird in Kürze in der Post liegen. (me)