Upgrade culture

Page 2 Lister-Society is told never to be content with the technology they receive. Instead the market pushes the competitiveness, with the ideology that ‘the newer model of technology you have, the richer, more powerful and smarter you are’. The upgrade culture is encouraging society to never feel content with the products they have and whilst this seems ideal for commercial gain, people in society are merely pawns in the businesses game plan to make money by encouraging people to keep up with the rat race of what is stylish. Whilst the Frankfurt school would argue that mass audiences are manipulated by this competition, it could be argued that without this constant modernisation would society and economy be in the position it is in now? Or would the lack of communication and limited technology be holding us back? It would never be easy to answer this question because no matter what technology society has at the time, society adapts to it. So is the upgrade culture really necessary, or just encouraged for financial gain? In pre internet days, businesses used fax machines, letters and the telephone, but businesses today could not imagine living without the internet. This will also probably be the same in the future, when people look back and can’t imagine how we survived with just the internet.