Quest for Quality
Quality of life, of services, of devices, of cars, of homes, of food, of medicine... Quality! Always seeking the best in things. There is no shame in wanting quality, it's a requirement for success. Businesses are very well aware of that, it's a good thing for healthy competition. If they can't deliver quality, then someone else will, and that's where the consumer's money will go. But quality is a costly enterprise, it takes time and energy to research new and better goods. Most importantly, the big bet if on the human nature to buy those improved goods, otherwise there're no point in pursuing quality. It boils down to basic a neural response: pleasure. The culprit: dopamine. Sugar and fat for example are powerful inducers of dopamine release. Guess what are the main ingredients in those yummy fast foods? Sugar and fat (with a touch of salt of course to enhance the taste).
Addiction to Quality
Let's consider movies for example. Since the advent of film making over a century ago, people enjoyed going to the cinema to marvel at that big screen with those impressive 24 frames per second scrolling in front of them. When TV became mainstream in the 50's, everything changed. Now, every household could have its own mini cinema in their living room. Some superstitious humans feared TV because they thought it had the devil inside. Eventually they caught up with the technology and embraced it like the rest. At that point, things were still fairly cheap, the cost of the TV device was sufficient to catch those radio waves freely flying through the air. The true TV addictive revolution came with the invention of the VCR! People could record anything audio-visual, share it, rent it, sell it. That was the the sparking point for the next generations. It became possible to own a piece of those movies they would see in the cinemas, to re-watch over and over at home. And that's not all... the Dee Vee Dee came along, delivering another revolution in quality and delivering a better picture, no wear and tear, like the video tape had. What to do? Upgrade all those movies on VHS to DVD. Then ditch those tapes into oblivion. What next? DVD not good enough? Of course not, Blu-ray is here, smashing the quality barrier once again with staggering HD resolution and higher bitrate of audio and sound. That Hi-Fi home theater is starting to look and sound awesome. Don't get too excited, because 1080p ain't enough anymore, nano-technology is still kicking it and now HD is slowly morphing into Ultra HD, delivering 4x more pixels than 1080p. Crisper image and finer details await you.
What's the Cost?
Considering my lifetime so far:
- Upgrade that little CRT TV to buy a bigger CRT TV
- Get a VCR
- Buy (at least) 1 movie on VHS
- Buy a DVD player
- Re-buy that movie on DVD
- Ditch the old CRT and get a new HDTV
- Finally buy a Blu-ray player (had to wait a few years for prices to makes sense!)
- Re-buy the same movie on Blu-ray
- Get a 4K HDTV (wait another few years for prices to makes sense!)
- Buy a UHD Blu-ray player
- Re-buy the movie again on 4K UHD Blu-ray
That's a lot of device upgrades and movie re-buys. Multiply those movies we love and the cost gets pretty high, just to keep up with technology and supply more candy for the eyes.
Irresistible Desire for More
We are an addictive species (blame it on dopamine), we yearn for better and more. Along with curiosity, it's been our evolutionary drive, without it, we would still be stuck in the caverns. That addiction has been beneficial to better our lives and improve our comfort (thank you dopamine), however it's a costly process. We constantly need to work for that paycheck in order to pay for those nifty material gadgets. Instead of using objects to our service, we have become enslaved to them. As eloquently put by Tyler Durden:
Feeling like a Hamster
So in the end, we're prisoners of this perpetual consumer wheel, where we are somehow forced to keep upgrading our hardware and gadgets in order to satisfy our lust. It's not easy to break this cycle of continuous invention, creation, destruction and recycling of our beloved objects.
I can't wait for my next holographic Blu-ray and holographic camera... whatever they will be called.
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Of course wer stuck on a wheel, how could we not be. Same corporate people that set the trends make those gadgets.
When you have the power to set trends, affect buying habits, its really not that hard to put the hamster in the wheel.
For every human being the quality of life is really different because every human being is individual and every individual have his/her own set of driving forces to make their life better and this phase of betterment is different from person to person, and in my opinion the greatest technologists was our ancestors because they have explored everything and through the cycle of Exploration - Research - Implementation - Failure, this way they reached to the success step by step so that's why today we human beings are on this current position.
We expand our needs time to time and sometimes we never work towards to achieve needs or we lack the opportunities to achieve that needs, so in this phase of scarcity human being should be Psychologically strong because to attain the cycle of success and possession an individual should know how to face the phase of success and phase of adversity too.
Thanks for sharing this post with us and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
So much quality on this article. I love this line
Come to think of it it's quite true, we never get satisfied with any gadget. Cause we always know there is another one better and crave to get that one. Well just like you said Blame it on Dopamine ;)
Thanks for sharing this awesome article, resteeming right away!
Dopamine is a big trouble maker 😆
Apparently, lol
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And then there are those of us "late adopters" that only buy any technology when it has gotten so ubiquitous that life is impeded without it. I had a "dumb phone" until just a year ago, when I was asked to do a day of workshops and speeches at an important conference and needed some features of a smart phone. To this day, unless I'm traveling, I barely turn the thing on. I have never owned a TV, but did have CDs that I just got rid of when I sold my house. I either recorded to Mp3 or just let it go. What will replace Mp3? Well hopefully nothing soon.
Simply, different file formats will replace .mp3.
As long as there's a demand for QUALITY over any intensive examination of the content, there'll be "improvements" engineered as solutions. It's not unjustifiable, it's simply that it's seldom necessary those improvements even exist, given that the relative amount of high-quality content doesn't improve quantitatively, especially content that CAN'T be distributed without those improvements.
Truly great music, great visual art, etc. will ALWAYS be made, the overwhelming sea of what is NOT pounding true quality through the noise floor is the impediment.
Arguably, we might be able to generate the kind of mass culture we have without high-speed protocols using different network architectures (they've been around since the 1940s with the advent of digital computing).
Well said Drakos.
The consumer wheel is so addictive. We all want more stuff but does it make us more happy? Hard to say.
At least with video content delivered digitally now we do not have to rebuy as much. Although once 8k TVs come at a good price will need to rebuy 8K based video hah.
I have done fairly well resisting the yearly upgrade cycle waiting as long as possible. I like having funds available to travel and other intangible things.
Well I think that technology and human development go hand in hand, many of us are lucky to have the monetary resource to update our things I think it is necessary to go with technological development if we fall behind, an example the market of cryptocurrencies will be the future of money in the world here in venezuela only 20% of the population knows that market, my son and I, we are always aware of it and how it has served us, to face the crisis that my country has, such is the case of working in steemit,
like the world is evolving, that's why laws should be changing to improve, and lawyers updating, I believe that everything in life works in that way, the evolution of life we could call it, nature science, technology, education, culture etc etc
It is normal that our needs are fulfilled to some extent, being compulsive consumers of the innovative! We will always want to have the best, try the best including food or anything else that calls our attention, so when we are accustomed to that quality and for some reason decreases or such service degraded its quality we see the need to Find something to replace it that is much better than what we had before
Its can be creepy sometimes..
Bearing in mind the relationships of the consumer and the goods it.
Variations in quality of good makes it a variable of vhoices with other homo-satisfactory goods.
I will never trade quality with quantity.
Thats just my view.
Nice post
You're right @drakos
the ambitions of people make time change, but how far do we carry that?
We have improved a lot in many aspects, but we have also done so much damage at our pace! It is not wrong for a person to want quality, but why make us slaves to pay for services that sometimes are not used because they do not have time! Why do it? It would be better to invest it in something better! everything that comes out is more expensive and the person, so to speak, becomes crazy to buy it! often forgetting other important needs are extremely consumers.
Why buy so many things that have only a little difference between them? If you can watch a family movie on a regular TV, you do not need to buy one that has even the internet to watch the same movie!
One thing is to consume to live and another is to live to consume!! 👍
exciting and highly argumentative exposure in the use of technological advancements that make it easier to shape information and it is impossible that no movie form in the cinema can be watched at home. as well as with communication can be done from home despite the distance is very far.
The Perpetual Consumer Wheel , technology ,blog, wonderful article @drakos , love you technology ❤️??
Made me think of this...
Well written. You're making me laugh and illustrating an important point. It would be nice if our quest for quality weren't so wasteful. Good to get into nature and remember that we are not the things we own.
"我们不是我们拥有的东西"漂亮！
不是所有的东西都依靠物质来衡量。我们更应该多关注内心的丰盈。
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Electronic is a testament to the more sophisticated and sophisticated revolution of the world, all of which is dependent on electronic devices and also depends on how we use them on the positive.
not all that easy it will take us to the ease to the end
A quality life for me is spending time with my family and loved ones without any fear, guilt nor restrictions, and a life of freedom and freewill.
好贴！分析的很透彻，欲望无止境。我们不要做追逐个人利益的仓鼠，更应该去体验付出的快乐～
This post is so true I to love gadgets, and then for me add cameras I am always upgrading it gets expensive
I lost count of how many cameras I've had. I've always wanted a DSLR and finally got one this year. I'll be good for a while with my Canon 80D :)
@drakos yes te same for me I have had so many over the years, just upgraded to a full frame mirroless which I am loving
I think this in our way of being as people consuming the first thing we see that is striking, and that could be a big problem for the world, the more we consume more damage we do to the planet because of the amount of energy , garbage, among other things that are wasted
Quality is everything. everyone wants the best quality, good as prestige and as requirement. However, quality is often directly proportional to price. High quality is identical with high price. Is that worth the price? What about the concept of five-star but five-footed prices as a culinary promo?
It is in our nature to always strive for better in all areas of life. It is like you said, if that wasn't the case, we would still be in our caves. Progress and evolution are natural to humankind, everything develops, expands and becomes better in some way, that means technology too. I would not consider you or me or anyone a hamster because I am sure that you do not follow all the trends for all the products, you have preferences, and why wouldn't you? Wanting the best is a great human feature.
Hi, @drakos, thank you for your support yesterday. Why do you use upvote bot? It is a profitable investment or
Nice article @drakos and this made me smile. :-D
And don't you think it's all by design?
Hello!
Quality is first and foremost a guarantee of success.
But unfortunately for all it is necessary to pay!
Great post!
Good job, excellent, THANKS for sharing!
Technology rules the world
i has upvote you witness I see you are very supportive of art, hope you will check my post ^^
What comes close to what you're writing about is sitting on a merry go round and trying to catch the guy in front of you...
I still chose quality over the price because in that way I can be able to save. I am not a person who buys something new that goes out of the market because for me money needs to be saved. I don't have that much. But I can truly understand those people who gives reward to themselves by buying something that the market had given. It is their right and it is something that could make them happy then they should do it but that's only if they can afford that lifestyle.
I figured it might make a difference to someone to edit my down-thread comment a bit. I'm trying to make a point here.
I know, I know, I'm trying to quantify to some degree what most would insist is unquantifiable, I'd insist it's not (with quite a bit of empirical support I'm not going to burden a comment with), but most people's understanding of what is quantifiable is very crude and/or ignorant.
The drive to create will over-ride the lack of outlets and distribution chains; it's those outlets and chains that make the difference in mass awareness and (likely) return to the creator, at least in recognition.
I want a drone for the videos lol... And music gear... I honestly cannot afford to the latest tech, a better camera, a drone, upgrade pc... That keeps you from controlling the thrill of upgrades. Then I realized my good old gear has consistently does its job. You must,you learn, and it time it becomes easier and I do not go and check to suffer lol
Just sometimes
A bit lol
And then I make bucket lists and all
Once you stop striving for more, you might as well kick the bucket ; )
And that is exactly the reason why I went to live up in the mountains i NEpal, far from all the technology, updates and hamster life you were talking about.
I just want to make bubbles soap :)