What Will You Pay for? What Will You Pay More for?

[Jeff]

"That's such an OLD phone," my 20-something colleague said, looking at my Samsung Blackjack as if it were something nasty the cat had brought into her freshly cleaned kitchen. I thought she was referring to the scratched surface and the cracked screen.

"Not really," I said, turning the phone over in my hand. "I got it about a year and a half ago."

My colleague wrinkled her nose with distaste and looked at me with an expression that said without a word: "Like I said: `Old'."

After a bit more conversation, she asked me, "Do you have an i-Pod or a Zune?" as if no other possible choices were conceivable. She seemed a bit shocked that I had no desire to carry a congressional library's worth of music or, still less, video in my pocket all day, ready to plug out of the bustle and buzz of human society at a moment's notice.

I tell this story not because I feel my colleague represents the typical person of her generation but because she is not in any way typical. She is educated (as opposed to simply "schooled"), well-traveled, socially and environmentally aware. She is no ditzy Barbie doll with a closet full of sweatshop-manufactured shoes -- and yet she sees nothing at all odd about an expensive device like a "smart phone" that is considered an antique once it has been owned for a year.

She is not typical - she is among the best of her generation.

When you consider that this is the generation that is going to be doing most of the demand generating and value defining over the next several decades, and when you consider that this mentality applies not only to communication devices and media players but to game systems, clothing, cars, and human relationships -- I think we all have something to be a bit scared of.

Which brings me to the questions I began with: What will you pay for? What will you pay more for? Which are two ways, I suppose, of asking: What do you value?

Mankind did not spring from the Earth or the brow of Zeus caring about "cool" or "hot" or "the latest" or the "most fashionable." It took centuries of social pressure, empowered more recently by marketing and advertising, for those concepts to replace "durability", "utility", "reliability", and "social benefit" in our lexicon of value. It will take the same forces -- empowered by the social web and whatever comes after it -- to restore those and add "environmental responsibility".

[Jeff]

Sorry - my 3-year-old phone is still working just fine.

[Zig]

Oh and almost forgot I have spare Ipod I can also throw in to sweeten the deal, since I recently upgraded to a newer model.

[Zig]

Uh, I'm already planning on getting the next gen IPhone when it gets released in June. Wanna buy my 1st or 2nd gen phone when I pick up the new one?