Cell phones are getting better. There are lots of websites on the internet. Batteries are getting better. Cars are getting better.
It is very common to focus on some large things that are bad and think that is the big picture without considering how much all the little things really add up to.
I don't really care a lot about any of those. I'm a lot more interested in relationships with people, the state of the environment, and general happiness. A better cell phone has never made more than the most marginal difference in my happiness.
All cell phones in my price range now have buggy firmware: this did not used to be the case. Good websites are much harder to find than they were in 2014. Cars are bigger and scarier and more numerous than ever before.
There are things that are better, but "batteries" is the only one from your list that I agree with.
I just picked up a $200 oneplus just for work accounts. It's completely fine. No lag. No issues. Zero bugs so far. 10 years ago were using what? Android 4 and iOS 6?
Are better cell phones making everyone's life better? I am doing nothing on my current smartphone that I didn't do on my first. I'm not even sure if I'm charging it less often. I guess the camera is a little better.
Like many of the other items on the list, it’s a change that few people actually asked for and it’s more in the name of surveillance capitalism than consumer preferences or consumer choice.
Sure, social media can con children into thinking they need this. And after it’s normalized then adults might point it out as an improvement, but in the end it’s part of why the “improved” phone takes more hours of labor to pay for and the consumer has fewer options than ever with an illusion of more choice.
what good is it if you have a ton of gadgets and iphones all over the place but no place to live? I'd take a home with a bed over all the gadgets in the world, if i could only choose 1.
it's a fact that the housing standard of living has gone down for the last 26 years. See this graph: Nominal gpd per capita / case shiller housing index. and you'll see it's down 34% over the last 26 years!
And it's no longer even legal to make basic cars without luxury toys like built in screens. Oh I'm sorry, I mean ""essential safety features"", that we managed to get on fine without only a few years ago.
True, we did get along fine without them, but at the cost of injury, death, and property damage. "Backover crashes" cause hundreds of deaths in the US each year.
Add the backup camera to the improved restraints, the collision warning system, the blind-spot monitor . . . and soon you're talking about some real money.
One can argue about whether this is good or bad, but they're not really luxury toys.
"Hundreds" in a country with hundreds of millions of people is inconsequential. The vast majority of people never backed over anybody because they used tricks called looking around and situational awareness. Techno gadgets meant to solve non-problems are toys in my books.
No, humans are not cavemen, as cavemen lived thousands of years ago and had a different lifestyle than modern humans. The term "caveman" is a stock character that became popular in the early 20th century.
Name some?
The issues people care most about atm seem to be getting worse (housing prices, cost of living, etc)