Disposable gadgets and the search for the next thing
Posted by Antonio 1 year, 7 months ago (Dec. 24, 2008)
I was particularly struck by a recent Radar piece on our rampant consumerism in the technology industry and the notion that the economic meltdown might forever stamp 2008 as the year of "peak consumption."
While I agree that it is true that most of us geeks are always looking over the horizon to the next generation of gadgets where Moore's Law can unleash the next layer of functionality, having chewed on it for a couple of days, I'm not sure that it is all about just consumption for its own sake. Rather, it seems to me, most of us are on this never-ending upgrade cycle because of the sense of wonder and possibility that it inspires in us. Is that a justification for all of the e-waste and environmental cost of pursuing this illusory perfect gadget? Absolutely not. Does it absolve us of the need to think through the whole lifecycle of the components (especially the toxic ones) in our laptops and cellphones? Certainly not. But it does help to explain the psychology of the dynamic in terms that are not just Big-Gulp ugly.
Speaking of child-like sense of wonder, I recently read Ted Nelson's 1974 Opus, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, and discovered this wonderful little blurb addressing just this very topic:
Finally, on the subject of getting rid of old (but still desired and usable) devices, check out this wonderful site I've recently discovered. As a middleman to eBay, they provide a great service that is both useful and good for managing the problem referred to in the Radar piece (I had a great experience with them and a Macbook Air recently).

Though the piece is nominally about techniques for designing video games, anyone involved with building any kind of consumer software should be very interested in this piece, especially those who work in the very malleable and fast moving environment of web services. I've often invoked the principle of "
I'm a VC at Matrix Partners living in the Boston area. I've started some stuff, worked at some
places, and I love making things.