I’ve had a serious problem that I’ve been able to repress for quite a long time. I’m a technology junkie. I used to make purchases all the time. I’ve been able to keep that at bay for quite a while, but the urge is coming back.
Over the years, I’ve made a lot of technology purchases. Desktops, servers, laptops… I’ve picked up my fair share. Initially I bought a few machines from retailers, and then I decided I could build it cheaper. That trend lasted for about ten years. A few years ago, I realized that I was spending a lot of money trying to build the ultimate machine, when I really didn’t need an ultimate machine.
That was a sad time in my life.
But I like to think pretend I was also ahead of the curve. Cloud computing technology was just starting to take off. The Web 2.0 fad was starting to die, and people were seriously starting to look at what the future of computing could be. Moving more and more things to remote data centers and using their processing power was going to be the next big thing. I didn’t need to have impressively cool hardware anymore.
But I still wanted it.
I learned to behave myself, though. I definitely still bought stuff, but not as many big ticket items as I had in the past. As a matter of fact, the machine I’m working on right now is three years old. I had to look it up. I couldn’t even remember the specs on it… only the magic of Gmail search saved me.
Actually, right there is the true indicator of much things have changed… from 1992 through 2008 I knew the specs of my primary PC by heart. Everything. Now I can barely remember anything about it. I found myself no longer caring nearly as much about things like clock speed, the architecture and technology of the chipset, or the boot time.
I’m struggling with what I want to purchase. The landscape has changed a lot, and I wasn’t paying attention. Nobody buys desktops anymore, right? Only laptops. Wait, nobody needs a laptop… a table will do everything you need. Wait, how about a Chromebook? Of course! But more importantly, what needs am I actually trying meet?
Technology has changed. Apple has completely changed how we think about things. Technology is no longer about specs, but about speed. I don’t care if the machine has the latest version of CPU, but if I open a program or an app and it takes longer than a second, I start getting frustrated. Is this reflective of me as a person, the generation I’m a part of, or society as a whole?
A few years ago, I purchased an iPhone to replace a number of devices that I had been carrying previously. It completely met my needs for things I would previously do on a laptop. Lately, however, I’ve noticed I’m not using that platform to its full potential any more, either.
Pictures of Cats
Exactly. Yeah, even with with that, I’m not sure how I lasted this long.