Imagination is your finest device
business sectors, including the JSE Handbook and the Mining Insert in Sake Beeld, Sake Rapport, Business Day and Business Report. The ads were run around the time of the recent Mining Indaba.
The ad agency is particularly proud of the way the striking image of a baby in the bath stood out starkly against the duller, mining and business topics.
I agree with them. Clever ad. Clever ad and media placement. And it gets across a message. Orchids to Aveng and to Metropolitanrepublic.
As an Apple fan from way back (15 years or more), it always amuses me to see the enthusiasm of the newbies and, I must admit, I get a bit of the “early adopter” cynicism when I see all the “Johnny-comelatelies” raving about the user interface and the brilliant graphics renderings on their ipads and iphones. We’ve know that all along, you see.
Apple has always stood, and prospered, on the image of being different, of being outside the mainstream, of being a watcher as the rest of the lemmings plunged over the techno-cliff.
It has also positioned itself as an aid to creativity – and with someone as amazing as Steve Jobs at the helm in its glory years, it’s been very difficult to argue with that positioning.
Yet I must say I am very disturbed about lemming-like attributes creeping into Apple’s marketing. They are currently running print ads which punt the new ipad2 for school use. The ads give the impression that having an ipad is the key to brilliance and success. And, in case you were left in any doubt, the tag line is “Don’t get left behind…” Bollocks. Bollocks. Bollocks. For cynically tapping into parent lemming fears that their children will be somehow disadvantaged without an electronic tablet at school, Apple gets a fat Onion.
There is no evidence that kids with access to the latest technology are any better, in terms of achievements, than those who are educated the old-fashioned way.
Indeed, take a quick look at the technologically well-equipped private schools which do the government matric syllabus and you’ll see their matric results are no better – and in some cases worse – than those of the best, yet less well equipped, government schools.
An electronic tablet may (as long as you have wi-fi access at school or at home or invest in 3G) make access to the inter net quicker. That does not mean access to knowledge.
There are multiple dangers in promoting these types of technologies in schools.
First, they give children a blinkered and narrow view of the world – they are communing with a small screen for most of the day, and not with other, real, people.
When the devices break, they will be lost. They will become focused on the technology and the device, and lose sight of the fact that, no matter how fancy, tablets – like the ipad – are just tools. No different from a spade.
And knowing how to use a spade with dexterity means you will be able to dig a hole. But to design a uniquely shaped hole requires something no electronic device can give you – imagination.