Holding back technology

Necessity is the mother of invention, and yet despite invention and new technology advancing, we consumers are not seeing much of it in our hands — thanks to big business.

It seems like companies such as Apple are not releasing the most technologically advanced products, since they can just release something a little cooler than anything else on the market, have consumers gobble it up, and then, mere months down the road, release a newer version of it with a few tweaked features, selling it again to all the Apple-hungry consumers who want the newest gizmo out there.

Another area of technology that is more advanced than current market offerings is the car. Money is holding more fuel-efficient cars off the streets. Americans tend to want to spend the least possible for whatever they want. Because of a lack of funding and support, many advances in the automotive industry are being squelched — the current production cost is too high or else looking deeper into the technology is fiscally infeasible. The economy is still highly oil-centered, and it seems like a dramatic change would need to take place — oil being somehow forced out of the picture — before any alterative technology would be widely incorporated.

Unfortunately, it seems that making money these days is more important than putting out a great product with state-of-the-art technology that would promote the overall advancement of society. Instead, we will always be a few steps behind countries like Sweden, China and Japan, all of which sport more technologically advanced gadgets and cars than America.