Though misattributed to Bill Gates, in the mid-1980’s it was stated that “640k of RAM should be enough for anybody”. The first new home computer my dad got came with 16MB of RAM, which was later upgraded to 48. My first three laptops all had 192MB of RAM; I edited many a video on them. My first new laptop had 512MB of RAM, back in 2004. I got 2GB in the next one, then 4, then 6 (later upgraded to 12), and now I’m at 16GB of RAM, eyeballing a bit of a bump, because five copies of Windows at a time tends to run a bit sluggish when I’m doing virtualization.
Times change.
Yes, times do indeed change, and rather quickly I might add. In half (or even less than half) of one person’s lifetime, things can be drastically different. Think about what did or didn’t exist when our own parents were born compared to now.
But it goes beyond that. What’s that saying? “Supply will always meet demand”? That’s true since our demand has become ever increasingly “demanding”. And while I’m sure that makes all the companies that create the supply very happy and fills their pockets with profits, I have to wonder at what cost.
We’ve become a society that doesn’t merely want to push the envelope of ‘discovery’, but that is completely and utterly dissatisfied with what we currently have in the here and now.
It’s not good enough, so we need something else. Something new, better, faster, more advanced, (or in your example – ‘with more RAM’). The turn around time for our “complacency” (for lack of a better word) was longer in years past, but now it’s become almost non-existent. We used to “make do” and “be okay” with what we had, but now you’ll see people camped outside of stores for days waiting for the release of the newest phone (for example) when the ones they currently own are perfectly fine. They do a lot more than phones did before and are fully functional, but yet it’s still not enough.
Back in the day you only replaced something if it was broken,… but not today. Today if you’ve had a computer or laptop for more than 3 or 4 years it’s “old”. And if you’ve had the same cell phone for even one (maaayyyybe two) years or more, it’s also “old” and you’re even laughed at for still having it and told that you need to ‘upgrade’, despite the fact that it works normally and is in no functional need of replacement or repair.
We are very dissatisfied and impatient – always in a rush to get to the ‘next best thing’. Never appreciating what we currently have, and essentially acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.
In a way, it’s also like a drug. We need that ‘high’ but when we achieve it, it eventually goes away and we need another, and another. Then, it no longer has the same effect because our bodies have become accustomed to the drug, so now we not only need more if it, but we also need a stronger dose. We are a society of addicts.