Weighing the costs of luxury_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Weighing the costs of luxury

The desire for frequent replacements also derives from technical - or disguised commercial - reasons.

Being the old fogey that I am, I have gone through three models since I bought my first one seven years ago. I lost the first one, a Nokia, to a thief and deserted the second one, a Samsung, because of an incurable antenna problem. I bought my current one, an LG, two years ago, after the Samsung service man told me, with a contemptuous look in his eyes, that he could not find a replacement for my phone's antenna unit because it was "too old". His reaction made me realize that three years could be considered "old" in the world of mobile phones.

Now my third phone has begun to show signs of senility - it often happens that the person I am talking to can hear me but I cannot hear him. I know I may have to buy a new model because it could be difficult to find the parts needed to fix my current model, which has been phased out. I feel like I have been kidnapped by mobile phone merchants.

Mobile phones are not the only products that drive or induce us to pursue constant updates. There are also TV sets, washing machines, refrigerators, high-fi audio systems and so on.

It is unreasonable to blame people for craving a higher resolution TV set, a faster computer or an automobile that is easier and more comfortable to drive. It is human nature to constantly seek greater enjoyment. Hundreds of years of development of modern industry have led us to believe that science and technology are invincible and omnipotent, and that so long as human beings are willing to explore new ideas, they have the power to raise the level of human enjoyment without limit. In other words, we assume that painstaking effort is the only fee we need to pay in exchange for a life of constant improvement.