One of the most important things that affects human civilization is technology. It’s an indication of our progress and the limit to what we can accomplish. I’ve been really following the development of technology available to us in our daily life, and there’s a staggering amount of progress and innovation being done in such a short timeframe. Major leaps aren’t being done in decades, but in a year, even months.

Now the curse of technology is this: you've spent a lot of time researching and waiting for a new technological gadget you need, say a phone or a computer. You’re convinced you found the best value deal you’re ever gonna get, and then you purchase it. And then a couple of weeks later, a new product is released that’s better and cheaper than the one you ended up getting. And that’s the curse of technology, no matter how good and new that thing is you’re getting, there’s always something better around the corner.

Well, when I say curse I don’t necessarily mean it in a bad way. Because when better and cheaper tech keeps arriving, it means that the market is progressing and improving rapidly, and that’s a good thing.It means we as consumers will receive better and better things for less money as time goes on. 

Companies are constantly releasing new products into the ecosystem, their R&D departments focused on trying to innovate and deliver more features for less price. Good tech is getting cheap, and cheap tech is getting good. Compare what gadget you can get five years ago and what you can get today for the same amount of money, the difference is night and day. You used to have to spend a whole lot of money to get something that’s usable, but now even budget options have great features with little compromise to be found. 

But there are downsides to the blazingly fast turnover of technology, it means that old or even recent gadgets lose their value really quickly. Most of them end up as worthless, thrown away in landfills, turning them into e-waste, which is very hard to take care of considering the complex components and the various (potentially hazardous) materials. 

There’s a simple solution to the curse of technology, and that is to learn to be happy with what you got. You’ll never get the best gadget in the world forever, if you got it for a good value and it serves you well then that’s all you need. 

My computer’s motherboard shorted out earlier this year, and it killed my graphics card along with it. Since the insane graphics card shortage is still going on, I haven’t been able to get hold of another one. If you told me a year ago that I had to go through half the quarantine without a graphics card, I’d probably go crazy, but honestly it’s not been that bad. Sure I miss the games I used to be able to play but I’ve learned to live without it. I learned to use my time to do some more productive things, and expand my horizons a little bit. My APU still allowed me to play some light games and it really makes me appreciate what I still have so much more, than back when I had a fully capable computer. I really think gratefulness is the key to happiness. If you keep obsessing about what you’re missing, you’ll never truly appreciate what you have.