Why You Should Stay a Step behind Technology
Once we hear about a new technology or a new version of a product we already use, we feel eager to obtain that technology or product. Our desire to enjoy the features that these new technologies can offer is hard to resist. However, other elements play a role under the surface and drive us to obtain these new products. Probably, one of the most important is the desire to satisfy our ego, feel special, and on top of the human food chain… Seeing the impressed faces looking at you, at what you have, and envy you for them.
One more reason can be the addiction for adrenaline rushes, which result from the excitement of trying and experiencing new things. Of course, media driven by manufacturing giants supports and even deepens all of that within our subconscious, and implants that hunger for the new things, and that ambiguous fear of being left behind.
However, if it is not your job’s nature to discover or test new technologies, and if there is no real serious and essential need for what a certain new technology or product provides, and here I mean a need that cannot be delayed or dispensed; then here are some serious reasons for why you should stay at least one-step behind the most recent technologies.
Saving your money is one of the most obvious reasons; the most recent technology is usually the most expensive too. The moment a new version of something is being launched, the prices of older ones drop significantly. So, from my own experiences, if you tune yourself to always upgrade one or two steps behind the most recent technologies, on the long run you might save from 30% to 60% of what you pay.
Saving your time is another reason to stay a step behind, upgrading to a new technology usually comes with the need to learn some new stuff. Depending on the kind of product or technology on the table, that learning process can take significant time in some cases, not mentioning the time required to tune and adapt any other technologies or even habits related to using the new product. Decreasing the frequency of the upgrading process becomes more essential nowadays with the non-stop flow of new technologies every day. New inventions are being released in such a high frequency for us to keep up with, it is an exhausting process that consumes time and adds extra load that can be dispensed if you just learn how to adapt to being behind a little bit.
And let us not forget that although a high percentage of new products are being tested by the manufacturers before being released, but the truth is that the real test is when the product faces the reality with all its complex scenarios and variables. Actually, you should consider the release of a new product the last stage of the testing process. In many cases, after launching their final product, manufacturers keep receiving customers’ feedback and fixing issues in some way or other. So the consumers here are spending time working like unpaid testers for the product while using it and taking the risk. Why you should spend your time testing their product for free! If you are using the new technology for work, then this means that you are actually adding extra costs in the form of the time consumed in learning, tuning and testing processes.
Any new technology needs time to be stabilized after being released on the market; that time ranges from weeks and up to years depending on the nature of the product. Stability here means that the product is being used widely enough to be considered both stable and reliable. This includes that you will easily find technical support when you need it, not just from the vendors but also from a wide range of users who already tried it and knew its weak points and strength ones, and probably you will find free advice about the older products easier than you will for the new ones. If it is some kind of device, then you can add the comfortable availability of the spare parts as another reason to wait for a product until it becomes cooked enough in the market if I am allowed to use such an expression.
Your digital safety is also a major point here; the new digital technologies attract more hacking and unauthorized access attacks. Attackers usually focus their efforts on the users of new technologies because they know they will probably be the majority. In the same time, probably the bugs and defects of these products are still not found or fixed yet; in fact, most of these defects are not being discovered and fixed until they are being used first by the attackers.
But the more important thing here is that widely tested products (whether they are digital or not) are for sure more reliable when it comes to your personal safety. Even in cases where the new product is supposed to be safer, the available experiences about the hazards that result from the old versions and how to avoid or deal with them are in most cases (not all) more trusted for your own safety than using a new product that been assumed to be safer through limited tests. Famous examples here from the past few years might be the incidents of exploded mobiles' batteries, inaccurate maps of GPS navigation systems, accidents of self-driven cars, …etc. For me, the only exception from this is the medicines because they are being strictly tested widely before being authorized.
So, here is a simple question: Can you be special and stand in the crowd by doing the best for you, not for the manufacturers? Keep your independence and save your nerves, health, time, money; and stay at least one-step behind the most recent technologies.
