“In its original meaning, is the practices, methods, aims, and spirit of commerce or business. Today, however, it is mainly used as a critical term, referring to the tendency within capitalism to try to turn everything in life into objects and services that are sold for the purpose of generating profit; commercialization, where the value of everything, including such intangible things as happiness, health and beauty become measured in purely commercial, materialistic terms, and where public services are being privatised or outsourced to private companies.”
“The related term "commercialized" is often used in an accusing way, implying that someone, often an artist, has compromised the quality of his work for monetary gain by selling out. It can, for example, be applied to a painter who uses his/her talent to do flattering, expensive portraits to order, an independent music band that signs a contract with a major record label and then changes its music and/or appearance to become more appealing, or a novelist who switches from writing difficult "highbrow" novels to populistic thrillers.”
The topic of commercialisation is particular relevant to that of web based mobile phone services. The article mentions how commercialisation is that act of turning everyday objects into ways of making money, the phone is rapidly becoming one of the most commercially viable tools for corporate businesses. They can target mass numbers of customers anywhere around the globe from anywhere.
Not only do phones offer various ways of leeching your money through useless downloads and ring tones, they are now becoming a platform for viewing the web, opening the customer up to endless advertising and exposure to commercialism.
We are living in a society of endless information and bombardment to visual imagery to tempt us into purchasing products. But essentially what does this mean for our social and cultural structure and how much does the mobile phone contribute to this? I would argue that the mobile phone is fast forgetting its original purpose which essentially is communication. It is turning into a ball and chain of information and advertising that distracts us from our everyday lives, or essentaily is set to become part of it.
The article also mentions that commercialism can be compared to an artist lowering their standard of work for financial gain. I would argue that the same could apply to a designer producing websites for mobile phone screens that are far less useable and have little in the way of graphical finesse compared to that of their 4:3 monitor aspect ratio relatives.
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