I'm not a big fan of energy drinks. They're loaded with caffeine, and caffeine makes me high. Too high to be alert as these drinks are supposed to make me. However, once in a while I do need to down a can or two in the hope that I'll get something done before crashing.Caffeinated drinks are a rare item in my fridge, and I've been brand-aware of only one: Red Bull. Its liquid is greenish yellow. Or at least this is the color that I know. And I only came to know its color because of a cocktail I sometimes get: Vodka and Red Bull. But lately a friend of mine gave me a box of Jolt, something I'd never heard of before. As usual, I just drank it right out of the can and the thought of what its color might be has never crossed my mind.
Then one day I poured a can of Jolt out on ice and was greatly surprised that it's blue. BLUE. How would I have know? It made me wonder how we, the consumers, come to know all about the products we use everyday. In the same manner, you would never know the color of ketchup because Heinz has decided to pack it in opaque reddish bottles. Wait, if you hadn't experienced ketchup before, how would you know the bottle's color is that of the sauce?
I've learned a new phrase today from a computer science friend: Cognitive blind-spots. I think these are things we might overlook because they fall through the holes of our cognition. There are a lot of packaging forms out there that obscure the product inside. The packages serve as a vessel to deliver the product to our senses (not to us, but to our cognition) OR block the product from some certain sense. Think about the yucky bitter medicine you take, masked by sweet sugary coating.
I'm just pondering about the possibility of not knowing the look of things I put in my mouth. In case of medicine, it's by choice, but in case of Jolt, I'd rather know it upfront than have alien tongue.
