Techscalation

You know exactly what I mean when I say techscalation: it’s that time when you bought a new game and ended up upgrading the graphics card and throwing in more RAM; or when you finally got a UHD television and then bought a Bluray player because otherwise you wouldn’t see movies at their best quality. In my case there’s no point buying the XBox One without the Kinect; and in anticipation of moving to fibre broadband my other half has already purchased a new wireless extender to go with the modem/router shipped to us by our ISP.

It’s a phenomenon I’ve observed many a time in myself and others: when an initial purchase or upgrade creates a snowball of new and upgraded technology.

The purchase of an AppleTV or Chromecast leads to the upgrade of the wireless router; a single tablet in the house leads to one for each family member to reduce the arguments about whose turn it is; and the new smartphone with great features spawns the subscription to cloud services, purchase of new Bluetooth accessories, a mass of apps, a docking station and maybe a little bit of experimentation with VR goggles or a spectrometer.

Given how common this is and how frequently we experience it, I’ve concluded that to name it is to own it. So here you go peeps, when you next find yourself buying all the add-ons and trawling the net for what else you can get to complement your latest purchase you know what to call it!

techscalation
/tɛkˈskāˈlāshən/

n. The phenomenon by which the purchase of technology leads to the upgrade of existing and/or the purchase of additional technology.