Standing in line for several hours to buy my iPhone I had plenty of time to contemplate the question of whether I really wanted to pay $1800 (est. total cost of ownership) for a mobile device. In the end I consoled myself with the thought that I was not only going to have a very cool device, I was contributing to the Apple cause.
I believe in what Apple believes in. I identify with them. Their products make life more interesting and joyous. I want them to thrive.
When I considered the expenditure both a purchase and a sort of secular tithe, it became something I was very happy to do.
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I’ve learned a great deal from Nietzsche, including this:
The respect-tax. — When someone we know and honour, whether he be a physician, artist or artisan, does or makes something for us, we are happy to pay him as much as we can, often indeed beyond our real capacities: on the other hand, we will pay someone unknown to us as little as we can get away with; this is a struggle in which everyone fights for every foot of land and for which he makes everyone fight him. In the case of work done for us by someone we know there is something beyond price, the feeling and invention he has put into his work on our account: we believe we can express our sensibility of this in no other way than through a kind of sacrifice on our part. — The highest tax is the respect-tax. The more the competitive market dominates and we buy from strangers and work for strangers, the lower this tax will be: whereas it is in fact the standard of measurement of the degree of commerce between human souls.
The entire purpose of synetic brand is to raise the respect-tax.
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User-centric is only incrementally better than being organization-centric. A real relationship is mutual and reciprocal. Cultivating this kind of relationship is the purpose of experience strategy and design.
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