The Foodbook: Embarrassment, Innovation and Gadgetry - a reality check

Junk - Paul McCartney 

The Foodbook, I do not find this clever or innovative, sorry to say, (see the below clip). Even less do I the suggested idea one Blogger put for using it as a lunch-box - EMBARRASSMENT. Should we be embarrassed by carrying what is obviously the food we will be consuming lunch later in the day? Get real! What is embarrassing about carrying a bag of food or normal lunch-box to work? Have we evolved, or maybe I should say "devolved", socially that eating and the way we transport our food should be so embarrassing, that we need to hide it. As a friend pointed out, a lunch-box was once a form of social distinction. This distinction died decades ago.

Are people losing their sense of social reality in the face of aggressive media which promotes fads, so called “new ideas” and advertisements of products, pushing them down our throats as encouragement to how we should think or feel? We are living in a world that is promoting so much  innovative junk and  gadgetry as simplifiers in life for the kitchen, for the house, for work or just for use in everyday life. They do not generally make life simpler or heaven forbid less "embarrassing", just encourage people to waste financial resources and clutter their lives with trendy garbage.

We gobble up resources in producing this new gadgetry, where often if we just look at what we already have is just as useful as some new toy. These news toys are often “just reinventing the wheel”, so to speak. Innovation is great but based on superficial ideals, like saving yourself from being embarrassed to carry a lunch bag or box, while commuting if just STUPID (there is no other word for it). The media would have us convinced otherwise.

It makes me think that we are slowly becoming devoid of the abilities and thinking that helped us evolve, in the rush to promote and profit from something new just because it looks different, labelled as specific for the job, has become a fad or heaven forbid would avoid us from being “embarrassed” to meets the superficial needs of the modern life style of consumerism and what the media would have us believe, makes life easier. What we should be promoting is:

• a better use for the resources already at our disposal;
• thinking of the resources that we have left;
• a resurgence of inventiveness for the use of the tools and gadgets we already have;
•  more recycling;
•  less reliance on fads or fashion;
• basic and better living with an emphasis on healthier lifestyles.

So if you are actually enchanted with this idea and really are embarrassed with being seen transporting your lunch in public, go for it. I do suggest you might consider recycling the old laptop or notebook casing first, to rediscover the lost arts of inventiveness and creativity. I suspect the next “evolutionary” step in the mad rush to encourage the consumer to feel less embarrassed would be in carrying your groceries home. Maybe, it is already out there in the form of a purpose built “Briefcase”. If I need to spend US$32 (EURO 24.95), I would find something better or truly innovatively beneficial  to invest the money in.

Fortunately, I do not see this idea catching on in Austria, except for the handful of sheep who need a fashion trend to prevent them from feeling “embarrassed.”  I haven’t seen anyone in the streets, or on public transport, who has seemed embarrassed to carry a bag with their lunch in it through the public areas of Vienna. In country Austria, they wouldn't care.  I actually haven’t noticed this sort of embarrassment in other cities in Europe, or Australia, either.  

OK this started with a lunch box - the Foodbook. Originally it was meant to be a simple Facebook post. I got carried away, but honestly I seen better innovative ideas for gadgets which are better and less superficial, with more useful reasons than this one. Marketing this one for saving a person from feeling "embarrassed" for carrying their lunch to work, is as superficial as it gets.