Manufacturing Dissatisfaction

…the further we move forward the further we fall behind

From the Garden of Eden, Plato’s cave, evolution theory to the utterances of Mick Jaggier. History can be seen as a struggle between achievement and dissatisfaction. The more we achieve the less satisfied we become.

With the advent of modern technology this trend is more evident than ever, particularly in the world of Consumer Culture. Every 12 months, the same technology seems to be twice the capacity, half the weight, have brighter clearer screens, longer lasting batteries and somehow is more intuitive.

Corporations like Apple, Nokia, Siemens, Sharp and Sony invest billions of dollars annually into creating new technology not to make our life easier, but to make us unhappy with the ‘old model ‘ we have. And then occasionally, those same corporations combine a couple of old technologies to create something completely new and “never seen.”

In reality there’s very little technology that’s actually ‘new’ but rather it’s a repackaging of existing technology… Before the iphone we had ipods and ‘smart’ phones. Before smart phones and ipods we had laptop’s, walkmans, cameras and mobile phones. Before laptop’s, walkmans, cameras and mobile phones we had PC’s, type writers, phones, record players, walky talkies, radio’s etc… you could probably take this all the way back to the creation of language.

And as we converge technologies do we stop consuming old technology? No, our PC’s, phones, laptops, tvs, set top boxes, dvd players etc need to be updated until the “new” technology is superseded and becomes the “original’ product.

My question is, are those large corporate conglomerates I mentioned previously spending billions to create products we truly want/need or are they praying on our preconditioned dissatisfaction?