Even at the micro level we frustrate our innate contentment mechanism: the latest thing to catch my eye in this regard is a piece by James Surowiecki (of Wisdom of Crowds fame) in the New Yorker in which he points out that
gadget makers continue to increase the number of features on devices, consumers continue to prefer gadgets with more bells and whistles, but once buyers turn into users the greater «wealth» (my term) only makes them unhappy.
But consumers are in for a rude awakening if technology
makers fail to find a way to shrink memory components enough to
continue packing more of them into ever - tinier
gadgets.