The Advancement of Technology

I was forced into using a new telephone yesterday. My prepaid plan would simply not hold up to the rigors of a girlfriend away at school. To let you know how momentous this occasion is, I should say that I have had the phone with the prepaid plan for a good five years. The only reason I got that phone, though, was because the prepaid provider sent it to me. For free. The phone I had before, for another several years, was no longer going to be supported by their towers. I'll now have to retire my old reliable phone and step into fairly recent history.

The good thing is that we're sharing a plan that costs the same as the one she was just on. The bad thing is that I had to get a phone with a camera. And polyphonic ringtones. And GPS. And apps. And 3G, whatever that is. Most of those aren't being paid for, though, which means that if I inadvertently access it there will be an additional charge. Given my experience with sending empty text messages to the first person in my address book, inadvertent access is certainly plausible. The thing is, everything I mentioned was included with a $30 phone, the very bottom of the heap (note that both of us got our phones for free for signing up to a contract, but hers was $200+ and mine was $30. I think mine was one of two that didn't have a qwerty keyboard).

What happened to a phone just being a phone? About ten years, apparently. The phone store doesn't even sell anything without a camera and a USB charger anymore, whereas ten years ago people were content with a phone that had a flip down receiver and an extensible antenna. Phone companies, computer manufacturers, and the like are working at a feverish pace to make new stuff accessible to a public obsessed with the new and shiny toys. The Apple enthusiasts are notorious for this, getting an iPhone 4 just a few months after buying an iPhone 3. They probably didn't even finish reading their instruction manual. The rest of the companies are the same way, though, and it's obvious that they're only working this hard because they have to if they want to keep pace with their competitors and the public demand.

People need to learn to be content with what they have. Newer, bigger, better things are only on display in the window because there's a market for it. The problem is that newer, bigger, and better things probably aren't too much of an upgrade, and they're going to cost a pretty penny that could be used elsewhere. Just remember that you were getting along fine a mere few years ago without whatever capabilities your most recent device had. Maybe then companies will look to make their current products better by making it with fewer glitches and better customer support instead of showing you toward a new item to replace the one you're having issues with.