Blackberry Planet Book Review

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Alastair Sweeny’s Blackberry Planet is a comprehensive account of the evolution of a startup company to a multinational corporation –Research in Motion and of the product lifecycle of the 19th century’s ground breaking technological device – the BlackBerry. Employing a chronological approach, Sweeny provides details on the successes, tribulations and failures of the company by binding together the viewpoints of many prominent leaders of today’s society. Readers are impulsively drawn into the book by the impressive comparisons between then and now through solid, numerical evidences that prove peoples’ addiction to the Blackberry. He further investigates whether addiction is an understated term concealing a darker truth where the Blackberry is held responsible for causing a negative impact on family life. Furthermore, critics were also concerned with the excessive dependence on the Blackberry that lead to controversies such as the Crackberry and how many were enslaved to it 24/7, 365 days a year regardless. Sweeny once more illustrated the increasingly large populations’ lack of resistance to Blackberry’s temptations through scenarios where proper etiquette was neglected whether it is at a White House meeting or at the dinner table. Ultimately, the power of RIM’s invention became too dominating and proved to be a huge distraction for the user and those in the surrounding environment leading to prohibitions and operating rules that banned Blackberry usage during certain hours in hopes of re-adopting the primitive ways of life unbounded by technology. Nonetheless, self-control remains as the number one highlighted word in Sweeny’s corporate biography. It is agreed that the Blackberry has power and excessive abuse of this power or when it is in the wrong hands, danger surfaces. Danger of depending wholly on the smartphone failing to allow critical thinking of our
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