We listen to music on a set of relatively old speakers. They’ve been kicking around since Maglianero days and they do an admirable job. We don’t get so crazy loud, we aren’t audiophiles, it’s working out okay, but they are getting old.

Recently the speakers went through a forced update. They demanded it an refused to work (for me at least) without it. After the update my phone ceased to be able to play music in the kitchen and volume controls were wonky at best. 

Immediately we assumed a corporate plot designed to phase out these nearly decade old speakers in an effort to force us to buy the new an more expensive model. 

This is how pervasive corporate greed has become. Software updates are regarded with distrust, new models are seen as a grift, the whole thing is hideous.

In the end our speaker had merely gotten unplugged, that’s why it wasn’t working. The fact that we had assume something nefarious says a great deal in and of itself, with regards to how we think of an relate to the products in our life. 

Of course I still have a difficult time controlling the volume of the thing so it isn’t like the software update was a good thing, it was a marked downgrade for a software that didn’t need to be changed. It’s our obsession with change that’s at the root of all of this I think. 

Diligence and improvement are good things, but a restlessness that prevents us from loving what we have, from software to sofas to lovers and trees, is not.

I should just listen to vinyl.