I was recently reading a personal finance blog and I read a post going over a very common topic.  Basically it was saying that a way to save money and improve your life is to fight the urge to constantly want more.  The idea is that by settling for what you have, you keep things simple.  Supposedly you don't really need those extra things.

This might be decent advice for personal finance (although I'm not entirely sure) but it could be really dangerous to apply this attitude to other things in life.  Nothing great has ever been created by someone that was happy with the status quo.

Technology is miles ahead of where it was a decade ago.  Web applications are accomplishing tasks that no one could have ever expected.  Phones are getting powerful enough that they are completely replacing real computers in many situations.  Storing information is so cheap that our children won't even know what the word "delete" means.

So first, let's imagine that in the early 2000s, we decided to stop wanting more.  we could buy books and CDs from Amazon.com.  Cell phones worked pretty well and email was ubiquitous.  What would the point be of more?

That sounds pretty ridiculous doesn't it?  Technology has moved faster in the past five years than it ever has before in the history of mankind and it's likely to continue moving even faster.  Even though we certainly have "enough" right now, we would be doing ourselves a huge disservice by feeling content.

My attitude is as follows:  I'm happy with what I have, but nothing I own is truly good enough.  As you know, I absolutely love my Palm Pre, but there are a million ways that it could be better and I fully expect the next generation to be a huge improvement.  As great as gmail is, how can you possibly be content given the untapped potential?  And no, my 6 mbps internet connection isn't fast enough.  I want fiber coming straight to my house and I want it now.

I'm not being greedy and I'm not failing to appreciate what I have.  I feel like I have an obligation to contribute to our advances, both as a programmer and as a consumer.

You can tell a lot about a company if you just observe how they approach this issue.  For example, Microsoft makes a living off of inertia.  Everyone knows how to use their programs and so they don't seem to have any interest in advancing.  From search to web browsing to office tools, they are constantly responding to the actions of their competitors rather than taking the offensive with preemptive innovation.

Then on the other side of the fence you have Google.  One look at Google Wave tells you all you need to know about how Google is viewing the future.  Despite having by far the most successful online email system, they are already trying to reinvent the entire process.  They realize that their great software won't be great for long (relative to the competition) and so even though they already have it all, they want more.

This turned into a pointless rant, but let me finish with this:  When I meet people that claim to have everything they want, I feel really sorry for them.  People in the 1800s didn't want cars.  People in the early 1900s didn't want air conditioning.  People in the 80s didn't want the internet.   Hopefully we can learn from the past and understand that whatever's next, we want it.