General Discussion

A new phone isn't necessary, heck a mobile phone isn't necessary, we got along fine with landlines and answering machines for decades. A new laptop or desktop computer isn't necessary, neither is a new gaming console(probably do you a world of good to put the controller down, go out and touch grass and read a book). You don't need a new car, a twenty year old model gets comparable gas mileage as modern cars, has little or no computing on board, and even after buying it and giving it a frame off restoration is still cheaper than the vast majority of new vehicles. And really, nobody needs smart appliances, TV's, toasters, fridges, any of that.

We have been sold the lie that we need this whole tech ecosystem that we have to update every few years, a bill of goods concocted out of thin air in order to drive up the profits for corporate America. Meanwhile most of these improvements don't matter. Audio companies used to drive sales by bragging about the numbers on their systems, frequencies, high end, low end, etc to show how advanced their system was. The trouble was the human ear isn't built to discern these differences in high fidelity. Same thing goes on now with televisions, ultra 4K HD, etc. when the human eye simply can't discern the difference. This goes on and on throughout the tech world, corporations selling crap that looks good on paper, but in real world practice doesn't make a bit of difference. Yet the rubes keep using it up, throwing away perfectly functional goods in order to have the latest and greatest, creating a vicious cycle that pollutes our world, drains our resources, and empties our wallets. Mass consumerism is a curse that we need to get rid of before it kills us.