This whole controversy tells you more about how a sizable portion of society now views tech as dangerous rather than helpful.
This ad is not controversial, infact it's a copy of many other ads (including an almost identical one from LG) to depict the same idea or concept to showcase how one device can be used to do "anything". These sorts of ads were common when the promise of tech was convergence and access.
The difference today is how people perceive tech as a threat where as twenty years ago it was seen as the revolution/what's next. Society is increasingly becoming less apt to see technology as a positive thing and instead as something to question or contain. It doesn't help that this is happening with many other fields of study/advancement's in the world when it comes to how our population is absorbing changes today.
This is why I also think AI flops at the consumer level, at least in its current form, and why Apple is probably wise to stave off throwing in "AI" to please investors alone. The next thing in tech has to meet where people are today… overall many users are signaling they want a more simplistic and task focused approach to tech products. This iPad ad instead uses a formula about homogeneity thats been on repeat for decades, but it's a concept that isn't popular with consumers today.
I agree with your perspective that tech is often viewed as more harmful than helpful. This was never in doubt and quite frankly, the inability for people to understand that as possibility is a major contributor to a lot of the problems being caused by tech today.
People often have a general inability to understand that things that are good and/or meant to be good, aren't inherently good and don't have some innate tendency to stay good. But I'll leave the philosophy of it for another conversation.
However, the ad is absolutely controversial because the idea and intention is ONLY the idea and intention, and it doesn't mean anything without the actual work, which minds the fine details, including the time, place, and how their idea is being communicated. Apple absolutely shit the bed on these details, and that's why they ended up with a shitty, insulting mess and deserves every bit of flack they're getting. Taking an idea that's had iterations before and implementing it here and now does not promise nor justify the same outcomes for the exact same reason. The communal, societal, chronological, cultural contexts are all different, why should they be expecting the same outcomes from a poor execution just because they had some similar notion?
This is also why "well they intended this" means absolute jack shit. Particularly when you're talking about the dynamic of a corporation communicating to their would-be audience. We already know what the fuck-wit ass dime-a-dozen intention is.
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