The Case for Defying Good Advice
The Case for Defying Good Advice

Why you might want to buy early-concept technology — even when you know it’s not ready

The tech media will often recommend that you avoid first- and sometimes even second-generation devices. That’s reasonable advice for most people, but not everyone. And maybe not for you.

To understand why you might want to take a chance on hardware and software that may not be fully baked yet, we have to start by thinking about money a little differently. From an article I wrote at the beginning of the year entitled We Get the Monopolies We Deserve:

We usually think of currency as a form of legal tender that can be exchanged for goods and services. But in a free-market system, money is much more than that. Every dollar we spend is also a vote in favor of the corporate entity providing that good or service and against that entity’s competition. Not only are you receiving a good or a service in exchange for payment, but you are also communicating approval of that company’s culture and rewarding its stakeholders. Money is to a free-market economy what votes are to a democracy. Therefore, spend your money as judiciously as you cast your votes. Just as many people consider voting to be a basic civic responsibility, perhaps consumers have a responsibility beyond just finding the lowest prices or enduring the least amount of product friction.

Although the context is admittedly different, the concept translates well to tech: think of spending money as a mechanism for positively reinforcing the type of innovation you want to see more of and withholding purchases as a way of discouraging product directions you oppose.

Let’s blow this topic out to the scale of a new car. Teslas are revolutionary in that they have disrupted the entire auto industry, single-handedly creating seemingly insatiable demand for modern, high-performance electric vehicles. Teslas are fast, sleek, and certainly among the most technologically advanced vehicles on the road.

But, as is often the case with complex new technology, Teslas have historically had their fair share of issues (some of which have largely been addressed, and some of which still affect new vehicles today). For instance, Model 3s were known for having some of the worst paint in the auto industry, often had uneven panel gaps, and were frequently delivered to customers with egregious scratches or dents. Additionally, Teslas are costly and time-consuming to repair, and hence are disproportionately expensive to insure.
['Christian Cantrell']
['Tech', 'Devices', 'Design', 'Future', 'Technology']