Capitalism, technology and consumerism: When will we learn?

When a new gadget sees the light, we all should be excited about it, right? I mean, technology has taken huge steps since the last few decades, and companies are creating new things that we couldn’t even imagine a few years ago. However that is not the case, as companies seem to be more greedy nowadays than before. But is it really their fault? Or are we finally ready as consumers to accept some of the blame?

Prehaps some of you must be thinking right now “But is the fault of the companies” and “They are the ones that give us incomplete/defective products” And sure, I can agree with that, but no one is putting a gun next to your head and making you buy such things, especially if YOU KNOW they are probably going to fail.

What I blame is the culture behind consumerism. I know that purchase and sale of products is what keeps the economy afloat. If no one spends money at all, the economy of any country will go directly to bankrupt. Instead what I mean is about the “irresponsible consumerism”, but what does that mean?

Let’s say for example that next week the new “Samsung Xperia 610S” is coming out. Before you even think about buying, ask to yourself “Do I really need that new button they added? Does it really worth buying a phone that is 0.01% faster than my actual phone?”

But most people don’t think about this. Our hunger for new and more advanced technology is leading companies to develop “incomplete products”. Think about it, we don’t even have a week with our gadgets and we grow tired of them, looking for something faster, sophisticated and modern.

This not only leads to new products barely different from their predecessors, but also more vulnerable. Technology is evolving so fast, that companies barely care about developing ways to protect it from hackers, or do I have to remember you about the recent events of Apple’s cloud services for example? Sometimes companies don’t even bother to test their products before releasing them, and the worst part is that people fall on that over and over again.

No company is exempt from blame, each one had made mistakes, and most of them have sin of “greedy”. But also we should understand that they are under the pressure of the masses. Just think about it, do you think that any company would have any success if they released a product every 2 years while their competition does the same every 6 months?

There must be a balance between offer and demand, and people are demanding too much. In a world full of competition like this, companies struggle to stay barely ahead the others, and that is what gives us “day 1 patches” on videogames, “expensive paperweights” instead of cellphones, “defective gadgets” and other things that we really don’t stop to think about how it may be our fault.

Next time instead of feeding this kind of behavior, hold on for a second and really think about it, don’t waste your money on things you don’t really need, and always before buying something wait for a few months after its release, or you may end up with a burned console like a lot of people on both sides, Microsoft and Sony.