The human race has proved itself to be resourceful, innovative, and our advances in technology have been exponential over the centuries. The last 50 years have seen a sharp increase in innovation in science and technology due to the fact that we now have massive computing power helping us. We should celebrate the incredible progress we have made, where we can now seemingly solve any problem, but our ingenuity has come at such a cost that we are in danger of losing it all. The human population continues to grow because our technology has allowed us to continue to provide more and more food, shelter, clothes, and many other possessions, by grabbing all the natural resources from the planet that we need, but this cannot continue indefinitely.
Capitalism requires that we consume products and services otherwise production would decline, jobs would be lost, and people would not have enough money to buy many other products and services. The holy grail of capitalism is to have constant economic growth so that as the population increases there are always enough jobs to keep people paid so that they can spend money and keep the capitalism engine running. The heroes of economic growth are the innovators who come up with new products and services or the next versions or revisions of existing products and services, the "job creators". Most of us are under the spell so we obediently sit and watch advertisements for the next new thing, and quite happily will buy it, often disposing of a perfectly good working older version, just to get the new great thing we just saw presented to us. Of course people can continually try to think of new products and services or new features to existing products but in a world which is seriously threatened by the over-consumption of natural resources we need to stop making things that we have no real need for just because we can.
Take a look at some of the products and services we buy as dutiful consumers playing our crucial part in the capitalist world we live in today:
Toilet Paper
How may decades have you been told that the newest latest and greatest toilet paper product was now softer, or longer, or stronger, or more quilted, or plusher than the one before? You know that the top of the line toilet paper in the stores today serves us perfectly well, it is not the sandpaper you had to use in the bathrooms at elementary school, and you don't sit there on the throne, thinking "if only this toilet paper was...". Enough is enough!
Razor
Razors have come along way since the straight razor and the disposable razor, but the razor companies have to come up with the next line of products every few years in order to stay in business. Over the years we have seen a closer and closer shave from innovative new blade designs, to multiple blades working in harmony together, to different angles, to moving razor heads, to rotating razor heads. The top of the line razor in the store today works perfectly well, and you don't look in the mirror shaving in the morning thinking "if only I could get a closer shave". Enough is enough!
Smartphone
10 years ago when some of us had basic cellphones with tiny low-resolution screens, with some really basic features, and we carried other handheld devices for our notes, and calendars, it was obvious to a lot of people that a single device connected to the internet giving us phone, email, texting, web browser, calendar, maps, and much more, was inevitable. Enter the smartphone, with the Apple iPhone, and the Google Android phones. Since 2007 there have been improvements to the smartphone device so that the latest ones are fast, have high-resolution touch screens, are fingerprint activated, have fast connectivity to the internet, have high resolution video cameras, and allow hundreds of thousands of apps to be run on them. If you watched the smartphone advertisements for the last couple of years you will have noticed that it is striking just how few actual "features" are in the latest models compared to the previous ones. Take the iPhone 5. It was faster, had a better screen, a fingerprint scanner, and had a few other minor improvements here and there. Then if you look at the iPhone 6 it is a real struggle to find any meaningful improvements compared to the iPhone 5, and even the main advertisement for the iPhone 6 focuses on a health app. Feature saturation has been accomplished on smart phones. How often do you hear someone with an iPhone 6 saying "I wish my phone did..."? Enough is enough!
Software
In the early days of desktop computers it was easy to see what new software would be advantageous for home and business. There are now hundreds of thousands of applications available for our desktop computers, notebooks, tablets, and smartphones. At home, most of us browse the internet, check our email, organize and edit our home videos and pictures, create the odd document or spreadsheet, perhaps manage our finances and do our taxes, and play games. At work, most of us just browse the internet, do our email, and use office software for our documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Some of us use specific software to manage databases, use proprietary software for CRM or ERP functionality, use products for web design, or use software for design, manufacturing and production. There are no obvious new categories of software or new software products that are needed, and with all of the existing products it is becoming harder and harder to find requirements for any new and truly useful features. Take Microsoft Office. The MS Office 2003 version probably has every feature needed by 99% of the users, there is only so much one can do to a document, spreadsheet, or presentation. In fact when businesses upgrade their office workers with the latest version, often they are just forcing the users to have to learn a new user interface rather than giving them new features, because often the software upgrades have a face lift to give the impression that it is better in order to coerce people in to buying it. The "look" and "speed" of new versions of software have become the standard bullet points because there are so few true new features that can be promoted. How often do you hear anyone say "I wish I could do..." with their software? Enough is enough!
Mouthwash
Advertisers of mouthwash continue to tell us that the new latest and greatest one will give us even fresher breath, and our dentists will be even happier with us because the new product fights those pesky bacteria in our mouths even more effectively. But even the advertisers are finding it hard to give us something new, so many of them have resorted to giving us "innovative" new bottle designs, such as a pump action bottle which fills the top of the bottle with mouthwash. It is quite comical to imagine the poor design staff at these companies who are charged with coming up with new features for products which have already completely satisfied the requirement for them. Enough is enough!
Television
Since their mainstream arrival in the middle of the 20th century, televisions have gone from being small, black and white, low-resolution viewing devices with poor video and audio quality, to large and extremely high-resolution color devices with superb audio quality. Defects in the sound cannot be detected by the human ear, each pixel can be one of millions of colors which is beyond the ability of the human eye to differentiate between, and at 8K resolution, individual pixels cannot be seen by the naked eye. With a top of the range TV today, there are no significant improvements that would make any meaningful difference for the average viewer. Enough is enough!
There are numerous other examples of products that we don't need at all, or we don't need to be improved, but unfortunately we live in a society where we are cleverly brainwashed in to thinking we need because of style, fashion, and the desire to always have the newest and trendiest things. Our innovative brains have served us well over the last few centuries and while years ago it would be easy to come up with new products and services to solve problems and to make life easier, it is not so much the case today. If you've ever spent any time trying to think of day to day problems that need to be solved, it's pretty hard to come up with anything. The naysayers will say that people will always come up with new things, and that people don't know what they want until they are shown it. But if we didn't come up with new products and services today, how often do you think you would say "if only there was this product or service". If the world stopped innovating today, what real effect do you think this would have in your life? Enough really is enough!
Human innovation really is something to be admired but our biggest problem today is not coming up with the next new thing. It is our very success that is our biggest problem and we have to stop creating new things until we can do so in a way which is sustainable and which does not consume the entire planet and eventually doom us all.
