Contemplating a dead computer [Reflections]

The author considers the question: as computers get better and better, does our attachment to them get less and less? As he drove to the local computer store, he thought about how the world has changed in the last couple of decades. Once, he would have fixed a broken computer and bragged about his accomplishment. Once, he would have mourned his dead computer as a friend who had stood by his side. But that was no longer the case. He realized that he had come to think of computers and other electronic gadgets as disposable. Even if they don't break, they're good for only a couple of years anyway. Technological progress overruns them, and they get bogged down with the accumulation of junk. The sad reality is that they're not worth fixing. The cost of identifying and fixing the problem is more than that of a new system. After all, electronic circuitry gets ever less expensive, while the cost of skilled labor escalates. Even so, he could not put the old, dead machine into the trash.