These days there’s a lot of gadgets we’re preparing to buy. There’s the iPhone. The iPad. The MacBook .

If you don’t like Apple products then you’ll want to set aside money for an awesome smartphone, a tablet and a laptop.

These days people seem to be updating every time the new model or update comes out. There’s always the latest version that’s revolutionizing how you (whatever)

I was born in 1985 and I grew up without that much gadgets. Sure we had a TV and not much else.

Here’s the thing. As technology got more advanced and cheaper..

My Mom and Uncle bought a Betamax Player and they would rent movies that our family watched together.

My dad got me a Nintendo entertainment system. (the one where you had two controllers and just had two buttons A and B plus the directional pad).

A few years after we got a SEGA Genesis which was more colorful and I could play Mortal Kombat.

I was at fourth grade when We eventually got a landline and I would call my mom and uncle in the office. Awesome technology. I called my crush and I talked about the Predator, Hellraiser and Mortal Kombat and other gory and morbid games and movies.

At sixth grade we had Cable TV and for the first time we were hooked on Cartoon Network, HBO and Star Movies. Life was awesome. For the first time I followed a complete season of Todd McFarlane’s Spawn on HBO. My mom also got a phone then a Nokia 2110. It was worth the same amount that the iPhone 5 is being sold back then. You had a four line screen instead of two and you could text.

We also bought our first personal PC it had the latest 64mb ram and a 4GB hard drive that comes with Windows 97. I stayed up all night playing Heavy Gear, Mechwarrior and X-Wing vs TIE Fighter. My uncle got me a CD with all the info on the Star Wars vehicles. We also got ourselves a dial up Internet connection. The one where you connect your modem to your landline to go online. I went to Spawn.com to download wallpapers and startwars.com to read up on Darth Vader.

When I was a high school freshman I got my first mobile phone a 5110 with the game snake. My teacher took it when I was caught trying to beat my sister’s high score. My dad didn’t give it back until I was in third year I think.

My dad gave me another computer that had more space and we played Starcraft and Diablo 2. My sister installed the Sims designed houses and became an interior designer.

I also lost a few phones along the way. Some got stolen and some got water damage because of my carelessness. I also got a Palm Tungsten T and T3 which is very much the iPod touch back then with a stylus and a 128mb memory.

So over the years we acquired phone lines. CableTV. Movie players. Music players. Mobile phones. Tablets. Laptops. Internet and mobile Internet.

What I’m getting at is if we’re always broke then where does the budget for these come from?

I mean there’s a lot of these and I’m sure we can get away with a few of these things but all of them put together seems to be a bit steep.

Consider this on your next hardware upgrade. They’re awesome but we might not need all of them. A few years ago we didn’t have all these technologies and life went well.

Before unlimited TV we played in the streets. Before mobile phones we went to each others houses. If we wanted to play video games with our friends we went to each others houses and not just remotely logged in to a server.

Today we spend more time in the virtual world than experiencing life in the real world. We also pull in our resources to make this possible.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to live life instead of recording and sharing it?

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you were present to the people you care about?

Wouldn’t it be more awesome of you had spare cash and budget rather than it all going to your hardware upgrades?

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you considered this before your next hardware upgrade?


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