Friday, July 6, 2007

New Seven Wonders of the World- Is there more to it behind the hype?

There are no dearth of examples to reiterate the herd mentality of human beings. When there is a collective fetish for something, we go ahead unquestioningly with it.The latest being the new international initiative to vote for the new seven wonders of the world.The logic behind this being that the original seven wonders were selected by one man, Philon of Byzantium in 200 BC and hence are all more than two mellenia old.
Out of over 200 possible new man-made wonders a team of experts have managed to nominate 21 potential candidates amidst a lot of controversies.People all over the world have been asked to vote online and to send sms (which incidentally, costs one US dollar).Ofcourse, if you are ready to shell out $2, you can vote twice!
So, who is behind all this? According to wikipedia,it is a Swiss-based, for-profit corporation called New Open World Corporation (NOWC). In addition to the sale of votes, NOWC relies on private donations, the sale of branded merchandise such as T-shirts and cups, and revenue from selling broadcasting rights.
The much awaited results are going to be announced tomorrow,the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the new millennium in Lisbon,Portugal.
The whole idea of picking the new Seven Wonders seems very commercial.I wont be surprised if the seven new wonders will become tourist hotspots as there are tour advertisements already appearing on the official site.There is an interesting article about this hype in Gridskipper.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

mmmmmm... is it true ?? i am far away from India ...but will ask the Queen about this ..thks

James