The iPhone 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The iPad this and that. The Canon T3, T3i, T5i....blah blah bah.
It never ends.
There is always another version...another pinnacle of technological advancement that everyone wants to be associated with. I, like many, turn into a child whenever I open up a crisp new techie device and feel as though I have been given a ticket into a whole new digital landscape of possibility.
But at what cost?
I don't mean financially. I mean morally.
You see, your last device gave you that excited feeling of infinite possibility and was the most exciting piece of tech you owned...until a few months or years later, when the 'new' one came out, leaving you back at square one, reaching, once again, for a bigger (or smaller), faster and better device. But did anything change about your previous device(s)? No. All that changed was your perceived techie needs.
You think to yourself in a winey, pleading tone "but the new one has a bit of a better camera and it runs faster and i've had mine for two years and..." and the list goes on. In the end, we cave, and we are back to square one in a month or a year's time.
As of today, my plan is nearing its end, my iPhone's home button is giving out on me, and I am having trouble finding a case for my model. My first thought was "the simple answer to this problem: just get a new one". But then there was another voice that decided to make itself heard. From the back of my psyche a thought stood up on its soap box and shouted in response to my first thought's apparent solution "THAT'S NOT THE SOLUTION. THAT'S THE PROBLEM!". Suddenly, this was the only thought I could pay attention to.
You see, the second thought was right. The problem is the techie treadmill. We can't get off it. We think we are running towards something new, but really we are staying in the same place, counting the miles ran, rather than the distance traveled.
In short, my (stubborn and unruly)moral centre has decided to take the steering wheel from the part of my brain that blindly squeals "I want something shiny and new". I have decided to let my phone organically run its coarse. I will let it run itself into the ground, and the day it stops croaking, I will move on to another one. If it ain't broke don't fix it, right? I feel like this principle has been lost in recent years. Companies want to you to believe "even if it ain't broke, it could be better, so buy this product". But what's the result? Money wasted, resources waisted, a drawer with hordes of old, still function-able devices, and consumers failing to realize the never ending treadmill they are running on.
For once, I am going to take a step off of the treadmill and accept that there is nothing shiny and exciting about our perceived needs in the face of our consumerism reality.
Iphone 4. Till death do us part.
