Status overshadows function

Today almost everybody owns a mobile phone. I was once talking to my boss, a wealthy Realtor from the South. On his desk he kept two mobile phones – one for personal use and the other for official purpose. Each gave a different ring tone so he could identify which one to pick up when a call came. When the personal phone rang, the lines on his face creased into a smile. He spoke in low tones and he became at once a father or a husband. When the official phone rang, however, he became serious, his tone took on a rather hard note and he was instantly the boss. Once he remarked, as he put down the official phone after an unsatisfactory conversation, that “every useless fellow now owns a mobile phone”. It no doubt seemed to him that the ubiquity of the mobile phone had somehow robbed the symbolic association of his stature as a successful Realtor to the electronic gadget that served his needs. Does a thing hold a value more than its function that even its maker is unaware of? Or, is the value addition an illusion of the user, unrelated to the maker?