What I want is

There's an advert running on TV at the moment in which a series of over-earnest people make silly pompous statements in parody of the advertising style often adopted by technology companies - statements like, "I want a new type of communication".

At the end an ordinary guy against a blank background says "I want to get a new telephone every year with a simple twelve month contract."

It's a slick enough and clever enough piece of advertising but it makes me wonder about our throw-away, built-in obsolescence world. Once upon a time things were built to last. If you bought a watch, for example, you expected to be able to hand it down to your children and grandchildren. The mark of quality was longevity. Nowadays we have been convinced by the manufacturers and their clever promotion that changing things as frequently as possible is the way to go. The new generations of products are in production before the old ones have hit the shops. Products have briefer and briefer life spans to go with our briefer and briefer attention spans.

I'm sorry but I don't think buying everything again every few months because there's a newer, bigger, brighter, brasher version out is a good thing. In fact I think it's a very bad thing from the customer point of view. Of course from the company point of view the more frequently we buy replacements the more money they make. And money is what matters.

So, what I want is a phone that I buy once and use for the rest of my life.

I doubt that I'll be hearing that on an advert any time soon.