Thought: does the monetary price set the value of an ambition?
This thought has been on my mind forever I guess. It keeps coming back up again in the main spotlight whenever I do different things where the value of something can be considered in terms of cash or resell value. The thought revolves around the idea as to whether or not the actual value or purpose of an ambition depends on the monetary cash price or value of any tool or tools being used to help with that ambition. This could range from cameras in taking pictures, to cars in giving rides, to gifts in giving things to someone, to tools in helping you make websites, and more. For me such a value does not exist, but it seems to exist within many people and almost everywhere in the society.
Examples of monetary values & perception: Camera & Software
To explain this stereotypical trend a bit more, following are two examples from the offline and the online world:
Example 1: Richer cameras produce richer emotions
I have a Canon A410 camera for more than 4 years now, and I have used it for everything. It is a small silver camera that can fit into most pockets easily. This camera results in me getting unwanted attention. I went to a mall a few weeks ago with that camera to take some pictures. The security guards felt that it was their life duty to not allow me to take pictures without them in the background. After about 20 minutes of me walking around in the mall looking for a good shot of either some object or a store, I was approached by a security guard and was told that “You’re not allowed to take pictures in the mall.” Every day you see dozens of tourists coming to malls and taking pictures to which no one objects. However, if you are not a tourist and have a light-looking silver camera, you probably cannot take a picture.
Last week I went to the same mall with my new Sony A300 DSLR camera. It is a big black camera that gets unwanted attention itself and makes sure that I get almost no attention at all. At the mall, I started taking a few pictures with it. During the course of an hour, I noticed no security guards shadowing me. I walked around for a while to look for some security guards, and as I found them, I took pictures of them and things around them. Interestingly, none of the security guards had any problem with me taking pictures with a black camera. Even the same security guard, who had previously told me that I was not allowed to take pictures in the mall, looked and carried on with his job, as if I was going to publish his photo in a magazine called “The people who keep our malls safe from silver cameras.”
Example 2: Only non-free software is good
We can apply the same small-silver vs. fat-black camera to the idea of using software online. Someone told me last year that anyone who uses free products in web development is not a serious professional in the online field. I do not understand the logic behind such a claim, though I do understand the flawed notions that probably amount to such claims being used: something that is being offered for free is not good enough to be sold, as people will not buy it. Thus, in such a logic, inferior software is given away for free while superior software is sold.
So what happens when a cheaper or a free software is used? For this article, please forget the mass hysteria after being open-source1. The concept of something you take for free, by paying through time and other actions, and not by paying actual tender cash for it, has not been yet understood correctly by many people. If you upload files to your site server with a free FTP2 software, and I upload files to my site server with a paid FTP software, would my site be considered better than yours based on the fact that I paid cash money for that FTP software? It should not, since if you want to judge, you judge based on the end result, which would be the site, and not on the monetary value of the tool being used.
Paying for a tool results in a better perception?
The above mentality is a form of a separation where those that can afford a higher priced item can differentiate themselves than those that cannot or will not buy a higher priced item. In fact, those that do not have more complicated or sophisticated tools and pursue a hobby or some kind of other work, have more passion and sincerity than those that have a hobby that is made simpler, easier and possible only due to a more expensive tool. It should be noted that this stereotype is also applied to the concept of feelings, emotions and relationships on a massive level: maybe I will discuss that in a future thought.
Give an idiot a high tech 8-megapixel camera and tell him or her to go take pictures. Many of pictures, if not all, will come out looking superb in many forms. In contrast, give the same idiot a 1 megapixel or a 3.1 megapixel with no auto-focus or other built in functions and tell him or her to go take pictures. Then see if many or even any of the pictures look cool.
Today someone online asked me to show him pictures from the new camera, since “the canon was just ok not that good.” I thought about it and showed him a few pictures taken a few years ago with my Canon, but I told him they were all from the newer Sony camera. His reaction? He said the pictures definitely looked better than my previous pictures and finally showed my real talent. I am actually thinking of not sharing my pictures directly with such or many people anymore, or to hide the identity of the tools used so that the focus can be on the actual process and the result itself and not just the tool, since it is a waste of time to have a passion for something like drawing and then have people praise you not for the drawing but for the expensive pencil you used. Better to have a secret passion than to expose the passion and listen to people praise it based on things they do not understand and for things that should not be praised.
What do you think?
What is your opinion on this? Does the monetary value of the tools define the worth of an action? What if someone cannot afford a higher priced item and wishes to use a free alternate? What if someone is focusing only on the actual process and maybe the result and not on the tools being used? The tools may very well be the right tools, but does the rightness of a tool depend on its price? Or is it the mentality of the society, that wants attention and differentiation through means other than actual work or intelligence or passion, that depends on the actual monetary cash price of an item to try to show itself as being superior or to show someone else as being inferior?
Thank you for reading about this thought, which was written in a free text editing program and then in a paid text editor program, then edited on a free online software, on a very strange website3, on a $499 operating system, on a $700+ laptop filled with both free software and software that costs more than $5000. And on a table that if I wish to sell one day, would probably require me to pay the buyer some money for him/her to take the table away. 
Footnotes
The footnotes allow me to add information and more personal feelings and notes to bottom of articles, questions, poems, and other writings or expressions without disrupting the flow of the main content much. If you have any questions or comments about this footnote or footnotes in general, please contact me. Thank you.
- Open source refers to the concept of allowing anyone to look at the code of a software or the details of a plan without hiding it. Open source advocates cite the benefits of such a concept in order to promote its use: more exposure means more people participating and improving a product, and supposedly less monopolistic control over something. I, however, also cite the downsides of such a concept while also citing the benefits of such a concept. Maybe I should go after the downsides of Open Source in another article? [↩]
- FTP = File Transfer Protocol. Ftp programs allow users to connect to different servers/computers, and to either upload or download or organize files on those servers/computers. An example of a free FTP software is FileZilla, while an example of a paid FTP software is WS_FTP. [↩]
- This website [↩]
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( July 14th, 2008 at 12:08 pm )
i like this. i have a small silver camera, and sometimes i feel bad about using it and calling the pictures that result from it “good pictures” because, it’s not an expensive looking bulky black thing. i also use free software, etc etc. it would be nice to be able to hide the tools sometimes. (:
im thinking of some sort of an example. like, coffee machines. is an expensive double-blah-blah-espresso-4000 any better than the same old 2-cup machine that’s been working forever?
im also thinking about homemade meals. free homecooked meals at some relative’s house are generally better than overpriced fastfood, depending on the relative’s cooking skill.
what about homemade software? if someone develops their own FTP program, HTML Editor, etc then uses those, is the value based on the value of the software used to create those programs? i doubt it, there would rather be awe that “whoa you took time to do that just to make a website?”
now apply that into the free software. someone still took the time and effort to create it, the monetary price of software doesnt change that. (:
and someone made my small camera! (:
so yeah, lets just hide our tools.
( July 15th, 2008 at 8:24 am )
I don’t think it does!
( July 15th, 2008 at 8:37 pm )
It is interesting to watch.
I go through the same thing with recording all the time. I’ll watch people fawn all over a $3000 microphone, when in actuality, they sounded better on the $900 mic.
Often I find that brand name is almost as powerful as price is. I bet if you showed people pics from your “NEW Canon A410″ people would think they were awesome. “oooooh a Canon A-410, Canons are GOOD cameras”.
Case in point. I had to record a movie trailer voice, and was stoked to find the studio I was at had a $10K Manley tube microphone on loan. This is the mic Don Lafontaine uses for his trailer work. I set it up, and the producers got pissed. WHERE WAS THE NEUMANN?!?! (a much more well known mic manufacturer). I was a little ticked, but I set up the U87, and we ran the session. After we were finished, my passive aggressive snarky side showed.
“It’s funny how this movie trailer voice sounded better on the $3000 Neumann reference mic than on the $10,000 mic LaFontaine uses… Just kinda funny.”
I got a lot of stuttery replies…
( July 18th, 2008 at 3:33 pm )
I’m particularly interested in this post … because I actually have a lot of background knowledge and experience that I can speak to! Have a look at my blog, and you’ll see why I’m excited to be commenting on the subject, since you brought cameras up.
You had asked whether using a paid, licensed FTP client makes a web site better, if you use that instead of a free FTP client to upload the same files. Obviously, the answer is no. And it’s no because that’s the way computers work; different methods of copying bytewise identical data must produce identical results, or the copy fails.
On the other hand, if the same photographer ( of some talent ) uses two different cameras - a compact digital and a digital SLR - from the same location against the same subject, the results will often be quite different. The more skill the photographer has, the better each image will look, but also, the better she’ll be able to exploit the benefits of a superior tool. Where the compact is unable to gently blur the background in a portrait, an SLR does this effortlessly. Once difficult subjects ( wildlife in dim light approaching sunrise or -set ) come into play, the difference becomes all the more obvious.
( July 19th, 2008 at 7:21 am )
hey talk more bout your new camera. im so glad you have an slr now. i assume more photos coming up soon?
( July 27th, 2008 at 11:31 am )
I love your writing skills and how you are able to describe exactly what you are feeling. I’m jealous.
( August 14th, 2008 at 7:32 am )
yes, it does! good article
( August 25th, 2008 at 10:23 am )
professional looking cameras like the big black ones get more respect, powershot and that sony, people think theyre slr’s and that your a pro ;|
( August 26th, 2008 at 11:53 pm )
Perception is reality. Its viewed this way with photographers as well. Photographer A must be better he charges twice as much as B. We are taught that price is quality.