Jason J. Crawford

YOU should remember the Time magazine cover where we all won person of the year with “You”. That was for us right? I mean it did say “you” and i’m a “you” and you are too, so shouldn’t we be honored to feel so empowered that we “control the information age.”

A cult of You didn’t begin with the Time award and certainly predates computers. From parables to Greek mythology, narcissism is traced as a common trait to human existence. However in the epoch of user-driven “Web 2.0” we witness narcissism driving towards cyber-hedonism through an aesthetics of personalization.

These aesthetics provides a misnomer of open-source abilities to “prosumers” by delivering a pre-packaged interface that is marketed towards making customizable on a superficial level and above all aimed at appeasing the users own pursuit for uniqueness. There is no greater example in the present than in the world of smartphones. Such devices are a personal appendage to the information age and as such have become a reflection of our own identity in this era where our supposed digital-empowerment has become a fashion accessory.

By focusing exclusively on you, it evades the user from the sense of community that comes with open source and instead sends them in the direction of wanting to further accumulate self-satisfaction by obtaining more superficial controls without taking part in the development of it.

The most recognizable instance of this has occurred with mobile carriers advertising around the Google Android operating system. T-Mobile’s MyTouch3g has gone leaps and bounds beyond their competition to market the phone as being the first phone strictly for “you”. Their campaign is featured on the T-Mobile MyTouch website featuring a line of celebrities such as Darrell Hammond, Avril Lavigne and Chevy Chase who each have clickable options to explain how much they love their phones customizability and how it’s a reflection of themselves.

The MyTouch campaign has also made the pages of magazines such as Wired and television spots with one commercial featuring Whoopi Goldberg, Phil Jackson and Jesse James each passing the same phone on to the other as the phone magically morphs into their own customized settings. This sequence is set to the tune of Cat Stevens’ “If You Want to Sing Out Sing Out” and highlights the chorus of “if you want to sing out, sing out, and if you want to be free, be free” and “if you want to be me, be me, and if you want to be you, be you.” The song has played a central theme in all MyTouch advertisements to create a linkage between freedom and the sense of you that is derived from user customizability. The commercial concludes with the tagline of the campaign: “the first phone 100% you.”

For the majority of consumers out there who are venturing into the android world, this is where a familiarity with open source will begin. It isn’t with the frustrations that the development community had with the terms of the developers kit or any hurdles in builds of Android’s development. Instead it’s all packaged up nice and tight around and easy to navigate UI where the goal of aesthetic customizability would give the impression that open source is merely changing your wallpaper and icons.

In the minds of T-Mobile, they likely believe the carrier wouldn’t sell as many MyTouchg3g units if the distinctions they advertised against Blackberry or others smart phones was about being part of the Android community. So by focusing on a connection of “you” rather than with community, it triggers consumer narcissism to feel the product will extend their individuality. T-Mobile is in the interest of selling phones, not about promoting community. That’s clearly understandable how they don’t have a vested interest to solely push Android. The responsibility would fall on Google but I think they feel it would be too daunting on consumers to understand that aside from when Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz demonstrated how good Android was at ordering pizza.

This doesn’t mean the advertising of community has to be boring. IBM created an amazing campaign with Linux that surprisingly never got much notoriety even though it too featured an ensemble of famous faces preaching the importance of community.

Maybe one day we can think of these mobile phones as a tool of community rather than being a fashion accessory.