Opportunist Magazine - Are Apple Product Launches Like Religious ...

The following is an excerpt from Francie Diep | October 23, 2012 | foxnews.com |

Apple?s emphasis on its icon and the company?s policy of not live-streaming its launch events ? reversed for today?s iPad mini launch for the first time since 2010 ? are just a couple ways that Apple product launches resemble religious revival meetings, according to one anthropologist.

Many Apple observers and academic researchers have covered how Mac fan culture can seem a little like a religion ? or a cult. With the upcoming iPad ?Mini? launch event, however, TechNewsDaily wanted to take a deeper look at Apple product launches. We asked Kirsten Bell, an anthropologist at the University of British Columbia in Canada, to look at some launch videos for us.

She came to some of the same conclusions as her predecessors, including Eastern Washington University sociologist Pui-Yan Lam, who published an academic paper more than a decade ago that called Mac fandom an ?implicit religion.?

?A stranger observing one of the launches could probably be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled into a religious revival meeting,? Bell wrote to TechNewsDaily in an email. Bell now studies the culture of modern biomedical research, but before she got interested in scientists, she studied messianic religious movements in South Korea.

?A stranger could be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled into a religious revival meeting.?

- Kirsten Bell, an anthropologist at the University of British Columbia

Apple?s product launches take place in a building ?littered with sacred symbols, especially the iconic Apple sign itself,? she said. During keynote speeches, an Apple leader ?addresses the audience to reawaken and renew their faith in the core message and tenets of the brand/religion.?

Read more: foxnews.com

Source: http://opportunistmagazine.com/are-apple-product-launches-like-religious-revivals-name/

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