Grant McCracken has a post on Adam Smith's take on why we love gadgets. Here's the relevant quote from The Theory of the Moral Sentiments:
A watch, in the same manner, that falls behind above two minutes in a day, is despised by one curious in watches. He sells it perhaps for a couple of guineas, and purchases another at fifty, which will not lose above a minute in a fortnight. The sole use of watches however, is to tell us what o'clock it is, and to hinder us from breaking any engagement, or suffering any other inconveniency by our ignorance in that particular point. But the person so nice with regard to this machine, will not always be found either more scrupulously punctual than other men, or more anxiously concerned upon any other account, to know precisely what time of day it is. What interests him is not so much the attainment of this piece of knowledge, as the perfection of the machine which serves to attain it.
How many people ruin themselves by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it. All their pockets are stuffed with little conveniencies. They contrive new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater number. They walk about loaded with a multitude of baubles, in weight and sometimes in value not inferior to an ordinary Jew's-box1 , some of which may sometimes be of some little use, but all of which might at all times be very well spared, and of which the whole utility is certainly not worth the fatigue of bearing the burden.
1 I have no idea what this is as OED is not to hand. Google turns up this contemporary reference of a box owned by a Jewish peddlar. Incidentally, "Jew box" is an anti-Semitic term for TV. Eccch.
| Gadgets |
The term is not listed in the OED. Although I did learn that tomatoes are sometimes referred to as Jew's-ears...
Comment #1 :: link :: January 31, 2006 12:04 PM
