Hah! Nigerians love gadgets too much

I felt righteous indignation when a non-Nigerian friend made the above comment. Perhaps “indignation” is too blunt a term, better - I went on the defensive. You see, I too love gadgets, but recently I have had cause to revise my reaction to my friend’s assessment. His view then was that seeing as we have mainly come from the Third World, poverty and underdevelopment, the advent of technology and the ease with which they reach us put us in a mad rush to acquire them, much to the exclusive of other things that matter more.

Yesterday I was in a friend’s office and I could not help feeling he was trapped by technology. All around him were devices of all sorts: land telephones of different shapes and sizes, a laptop that he kept fiddling with and in front of him a Nokia communicator of some sort. When his mobile phone rang, I expected him to pick up ‘this’ Nokia but no, it was another sleek-looking one in a corner that was calling for his attention. Gadgets, gadgets…

Fine, they’re good, but aren’t we perhaps becoming a lil-bit impulsive? It’s somewhat akin to our love for all things ‘latest’ - from cars to clothes… Nothing wrong, but these things are made for our use, not vice versa.

Just a thought.