• by Karl Greenberg , Staff Writer, September 11, 2015

My wristwatch weighs about a pound and a half and does only one thing, and not too terribly well. But my affection for it is like affection of all kinds for all things: it is unreasoning. The watch broke a couple of months after I bought it, but instead of putting it in the recycle bin, since it's enough steel to patch a leak in a battleship, I sent it back for repairs. I looked forward to getting it back even though my smartphone keeps better time. 

There you have it, the weird diptych of the modern mind: “Make it simple, tactile, mechanical, heavy, real. No, wait, more apps, please, sir. More apps, please.” I actually wish I had an Apple Watch, absolutely, positively. But, no, I positively, absolutely will not have one. Not here, not there, not anywhere. Not another device controlling my life with its apps, its promises. Or maybe I will. Maybe next year. Or maybe next week.

I spoke with Havas Worldwide's chief strategy officerTim Maleeny on this general theme, as it is a theme of Havas’ new paper on our dis-ease with technology, and how the Matrix is screwing up our lives and changing how we look at ourselves — how we define ourselves —  by annealing work and pleasure. I'm not sure I want to go through the whole report, mostly because I'm too busy, I've got imaginary appointments, fake deadlines (the report says, by the way, that while people think they are over-extended now, a lot of it is people being posers, talking about it for bona fides — frenetic is the new Alpha). But some points about “The Modern Nomad: Connect Me If You Can” are: 

The world comprises The Conflicted, The Fatigued and The Entrenched. The first live with tension between wanting to speed up and slow down; the second long to return to a slower, more mindful way of living, where a watch is just a watch, though ideally water resistant; the third group just texted me that they’re too busy to talk right now, and sent a “shrug” emoticon.

Maleeny said brands, dealing with tech-ambivalent consumers like these, need to talk about how a product can make your life better, not what it has inside. “It's about ‘why should I care?’ because I have so many other things as choices,” he said. He argues that a lot of companies are still making the mistake of talking about their gadgets with a lack of empathy for the customer. Not contextualizing. “How can you enhance, enable and make life easier. It's easy to get lost in the technology and innovation discussion without the higher order of benefit.”

Something, he notes, Apple does very well. Speaking of which, Tim Cook was on Charlie Rose this week talking about the Apple Watch along those higher-order-of-benefit lines. He talked about AirStrip, an app for the wearer’s physician that uses the watch as a health monitor. Cook was hitting all the “Why do I care about this?” buttons. He wasn't subtle about how he wants to make life easier, happier, and better for all people, everywhere, and the Apple Watch is just the thing. He’s wrong. I tried smoking an Apple Watch and nothing happened. 

My problem with some of this “We Bring Good Things to Life” stuff applied to hi-tech — an app that can read your blood sugar levels and tell Instagram, for instance — is that its very ubiquity has made it disingenuous. When I hear some company like, I don't know, Airbnb or Uber (business model onions that, when you strip away the layers, are basically just servers with logos slapped on them), tell me they just want to make my life better, easier, more efficient, my mind goes right to, “Is this a threat?” 

Maleeny tells me, correctly I think, that today's connected life is a boundary-less life (and not just between private and public) “Some people are looking for a balance between pure working existence and life experiences. And there's social currency in being busy; it's a social media badge, and it has captured all of us.” he said. “People point less to leisure as a kick-back opportunity, and more to wanting to do more and be more.” There is, he said, a tension between this perception that if people lead lives always on the go, it's more interesting. “But they also acknowledge that it’s potentially less fulfilling.” There's tension: fear of missing out, and a love of missing out. Choose your bling.