Can technology get lost in translation? The Samsung S4, shown in its many-featured glory in the promotional video above, launched this week with the tech equivalent of a Rockettes show at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Many characterized the event as "over the top" with the implication that Samsung was trying a bit too hard. Some criticisms were more pointed, like CNET's Molly Wood, who pronounced the event, "Tone-deaf and shockingly sexist."
We tend to think of technology as an outgrowth of science and, as such, culturally neutral. But nothing humans do is culturally neutral and our technology encodes our biases and aspirations just as cogently as any novel or film. There is a very real sense in which the Korean company is pushing back against the cultural hegemony of the American company. And that's all fine for the macroeconomists and cultural critics, but where does it leave the American smartphone consumer?
Contrast the song and dance of Thursday's "Unpacked" extravaganza to the more existential image of a singular Steve Jobs, spotlit in a black turtleneck and you have a pretty good illustration of the archetypal divide between Samsung and Apple. Busby Berkeley vs. Samuel Beckett. Maximalist vs. minimalist.
On the one hand, more is better. The S4 is bigger and faster than the iPhone 5 with a higher resolution screen containing almost three times the pixels. And, as Forrester Research's Charles Golvin pointed out in these pages, "its real differentiation lies in the software it has built to leverage the phone’s hardware. From the ability to composite images from both cameras simultaneously, to compositing sound with still images, to embedded language translation integrated with voice to text and text to voice, Samsung’s much-improved software skills translate to a wealth of new experiences for their customers."
When I watched this product introduction video that Samsung put together, I was struck by how it does not seem tuned to the American audience. The central conceit of the S4's marketing is that the phone is a "life companion," that can "Make your life richer, simpler, and more fun." There website copy speaks for itself:
As a real life companion, the new Samsung GALAXY S4 helps bring us closer and captures those fun moments when we are together. Each feature was designed to simplify our daily lives. Furthermore, it cares enough to monitor our health and well-being. To put it simply, the Samsung GALAXY S4 is there for you
Just as the phone itself contains 16 separate named features, some of them very innovative and impressive, the marketing brief wants to satisfy four objectives. With the S4:
- Daily life is more convenient
- Life becomes more fun
- Relationships grow closer
- Wellbeing is cared for
Seoul, we have a problem. Americans don't think about their phones this way!
Samsung's intent is clear and sincere. In the philosophy statement on Samsung's corporate website it says, "all of our products… have the power to enrich lives. And that’s what making a better global society is all about." There is in this language both an admirable ambition and a naive oversimplification of how technology impacts society.
There is something paternalistic in the tight tautology of the Samsung argument. Your phone makes your life more convenient and therefore more fun. When our lives are more fun, our relationships with others grow closer and we take better care of ourselves. Maybe the smartphone has had this impact in societies with a more collectivist orientation, but in hyper-individualistic America, the smartphone and other mobile devices—led by the iPhone—are the tools of self absorption.
For a perfect illustration of how this has played out in Apple's marketing, look at this 30-second spot for the iPad 2, the last product that Steve Jobs lived to introduce:
Simply titled, "We Believe, " the ad talks about how "when technology gets out of the way, everything becomes more delightful, even magical. That's when you leap forward." That's about as close to a mission statement as you will get from Apple. It's more about magic than management.
Apple, in contrast to Samsung, does not believe that a new product will change your life. Apple knows it already has changed your life. So its messaging can in fact be very minimal, because it calls upon a pre-existing library of highly positive associations. In Apple's long-form introduction to the iPhone 5 (below), Jony Ive says, "With this unique relationship people have with their iPhones, we take changing it really seriously." Fast Company's design editor Cliff Kuang writes that, "It's no surprise that Apple's own designs have grown more conservative over time." He even ventures that "Apple might have reached a point where the company is actually bad for design, because their own example is limiting people’s imagination for what good design can truly be."
Samsung is in the business of opening up, not shutting down. It wants to improve the world by improving the phone. The company's mission is arguably more laudable than its American competitor's, which seems to be mostly concerned with the improving the phone part of the equation, but it is also playing catchup. In many ways, I think that software design is the most critical issue for both companies at this point. The Galaxy S4, the iPhone 5, both are great pieces of hardware design and engineering. But Apple has put Jony Ive in charge of software as well as hardware because it recognizes that as much as consumers love their iPhones fetishistically, it's not what the phone is but what the phone does that's ultimately important.
And with the S4, Samsung has introduced a host of built-in software applications (and enabled a great many more from third-party developers) that American consumers may or may not turn out to value. Samsung's corporate philosophy says we should, that these things are good for us both personally and socially, that they will improve our lives and global society, but that's not how we roll here. Burgers over broccoli, dude.
This is where my own tautology kicks in. What our phones do affects how we feel about who we are. Hardware specs and innovative applications aside, Apple probably still has a stronger bead on who we are by not over-specifying what it can do for us.
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