Technology & The Male Ego: Why They Go Hand In Hand

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I just came from the dog park, and what was an otherwise sweet spring day was marred by more than a few moments of terror as two dogs fought over a toy. While there was something funny about near-bloodshed over a squeaky rubber ducky, couldn’t one of them just have settled for a stick? No, that doesn’t seem possible now that I write it out like that. That rubber duck was to die for. In the human world, most of us dudes still have our nads, so the alpha-male toy dynamic is something that you see often. Entire industries are built on male pissing contests (I’m looking at you, sports car). When you work in media, you build up a sixth sense for seeing through marketing directed at male egos. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the rest of the world has developed that radar. I think testosterone is solely responsible for the success of the colossal Samsung Galaxy Note. If you don’t know about the Note, it’s a phone so big it can only be palmed by Yao Ming, and its crowning technical achievement is bringing back the pen stylus that no one wanted the first time. Next week, I’ll tell you what I really think of the Galaxy Note (for legal reasons, I must disclose that I hate this phone and think it’s dumb). I probably look like one of those guys who has the biggest tech for the sake of showing it off. Since my demanding graphics work and tech writing forces me to upgrade hardware pretty often, I’m the guy in the cafe with the 17” MacBook Pro that you think is a douchebag because you think “Who the hell needs a $3,000 laptop?” It turns out that I do, but maybe I should refrain from yelling, “Eat it, bitches,” as I draw it out of my bag like it’s Excalibur. Sometimes I wonder if I’m into graphics because it gives me an excuse to buy the latest and greatest in the "Oooh, shiny" aisle. I’d say there’s a good chance that’s a motivator. I just got the new iPad ostensibly to see how my self-published e-book, 101 Autodesk Maya Tips, would look on the retina display. Tax deductible, sure. Wholly necessary, probably not. It could be worse, I guess. You could go the opposite route from having the latest and greatest tech to becoming one of those guys still rocking a Commodore 64 or a Newton because you’ve convinced yourself it never got any better than that. Yeah, because the only thing better than a Galaxy Note is having a thicker black-and-white version without internet. I’ll take two. Continue Reading

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