Nowadays, everyone owns some sort of “smart device.” Our world is dependent on technology to function. We use everything from Droids to iPads in our daily lives. In the past two decades, we’ve progressed from the black-and-white Game Boy to the touchscreen, Wi-Fi capable Game Boy DSi. We’ve moved from landlines to smart-phones. We can now fit the power of which was once enough machinery to fill a room into a 10-inch, 2.38 pound, MacBook Air. The level of progress made in the past 100 years has far surpassed that of any other century. And I’m only certain that the next 100 years will only continue to follow this exponential trend.
One reason for this trend is the result of an extremely competitive market. Companies have to work tirelessly against each other and constantly produce new products in order to survive. Thus, the degree of progress made from this aggressive environment far outshines that made as a result of mutual cooperation. This effect is seen in the rapid technical development among the top high-tech enterprises such as Apple and Google.
Apple and Google are constantly at war with each other as each company struggles to come out with the best product in its fight for survival. For instance, Google has challenged Apple’s iOS mobile device software by coming out with the Android OS. To win over consumers, Apple and Google have added more and more advanced and appealing features. The companies have gone head-to-head, furiously trying to overtake the other. In Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs”, a biography of the former Apple CEO, Jobs was quoted showing his rage at Google by saying, “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to…right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.” This level of competition has proved to be effective and beneficial to consumers as both Android and iPhone OS systems constantly continue to improve.
Although competition is often thought of as detrimental to corporate health, we must think of it in a positive light. Competition forces companies to constantly strive to be innovative and progressive. If this competition didn’t exist, we would never be propelled to improve our ideas, therefore halting all progress. The modern conveniences we have grown to love and depend on, like our laptops and cell-phones, would cease to exist as we know them.
Here at Andover, we must not think of competition as a bad thing. Instead, we should embrace it. Healthy competition can help us strive to pursue higher grades, positions of leadership in the community or success on the playing field. If approached in a respectful manner, competition can lead us all to perform our very best. This would not only help us grow and improve as individuals but also flourish as a community.
Competitiveness is an essential ingredient in the advancement of humanity. This nature is inherent in every person and drives him or her forward. We need to learn that the people who oppose us should not be viewed as the enemy but rather as an essential element to our development, and, in a greater sense, the development of the world.
Sarah Lee is a two-year Upper from Seoul, South Korea and an Associate Arts and Leisure Editor for The Phillipian.