The love between men and gadgets is a pure and eternal one, for which there are many and varied reasons.
However, their love for the bogus, catalogue-type gadget is without doubt the weirdest. You know, gadgets like the wine-pourer, the electric carving knife, and so on.
Men like these because they intervene to correct the small yet obvious flaws in the smooth running of things: a drop of wine here, a badly carved roast there. Such imperfections can cause a worrying sense of just how many things might be going wrong all over the world. Clearly, if they can avoid as many of these tiny wrong-happenings as possible, they will end up happier.
It is this pressing sense that things could be better, incidentally, that inspires all the fantasy gadgetry you hear about some time after cocktail hour, when people start saying, ”Wouldn’t it be good if you had a tiny sensor in your stomach that could tell when you were hungry and put some peanuts in your mouth?”
Most gadget-centric films are in this drunk-thinking loop: you look at Minority Report, say, and think, ”Wow, those mechanical spiders! They can run up stairs, and recognise people just by looking in their eyes!” And then, three weeks later, you realise that landlords can do that as well.
Communications gadgetry — certainly any that you take out of the house — is a definite factor in proving or maintaining alpha-male status. There is more evidence for this than there is for gravity.
First, why is there so much more variety and coolness in the design of cellphones than there is with videos? Why can’t you get an ice-blue video? Or a video you can bounce across the room (like my cellphone, which is, actually, very cool)?
Because you’d have to invite people round in order to see it and then you’d probably have to give them crisps and a drink, and then they might be too busy snacking to … oh, it just wouldn’t be worth it.
Cellphones, on the other hand, you take everywhere you go. With a demonstrably pricey cell, you can show even complete strangers how you’re The Daddy.
You will notice that cellphone refusniks are often concerted beta males: males whose life’s work is not to be mistaken for an alpha male, in case someone makes them get a round in, or call a plumber. Yet more proof.
In subtle contrast, men buy DVDs and MP3s, because they are new and they like having new things. Women also like having new things but (and I’m going into rash gender generalisation here) we have more abstract minds, so we can conceive of the notion that something can be second-hand (such as clothing), but still new. Men, however, need total newness; that’s why the term boxfresh was invented, to distinguish male newness from female newness.
But what of the old-favourites around the home? The stereo, the telly, the Playstation, the laser clock that beams the time on to the walls, the camera with the funny bit that serves no discernible function? These exist so that men can say: ”Don’t touch that!” They’re like this especially with children, but girlfriends and wives will do. (They would never say ”Don’t touch that!” to a flatmate. He would laugh.)
One thing to be said for the love of a gadget: it doesn’t start wars. Apart from those James Bond gadgets, which also loom large in the male psyche, with the weeny cameras coming out of the eentsy forks and taking pictures of foreign officials who then, pretty reliably, end up … erm, threatening war.
But all that can be filed under Not To Worry. Worry more about flat-screen TVs and digicams and their obsessive male owners. Worry about hearing the words: don’t touch that! — (c) Guardian Newspapers 2002