We typically think it is self-evident that technology improves over time. Of course an Iphone 8 is better than an IPhone4– think of the faster processor it has and the much greater memory capacity. As Megan McArdle contemplates her dying refrigerator, she makes two observations 1. Refrigerators [as well as other appliances] now seem to die earlier than models did twenty or thirty years ago. 2. While we might think we have lots of choices, in some ways maybe we don’t. While we can choose to buy a refrigerator that is blue tooth enabled and has a television integrated into it, we can’t choose to buy a simple basic refrigerator like someone might have bought in 1960 (only with 2018 technology). All technology keeps getting more complex. Maybe this is the downside of Steven Johnson’s the adjacent possible. As we keep moving “forward” the technology we use gets more complex whether we like it to or not. Why do you think this is so? Is it a technological law? Is it a corporate conspiracy? Or something else?