Economists distinguish between an asset's physical life and its economic life. The physical life is how long something can function. The economic life is how long it remains useful relative to alternatives. Technology products increasingly have economic lives far shorter than their physical lives. The thing still works. It's just been obsoleted.

The frontier keeps moving. Progress keeps accelerating. The rational response is shorter time horizons, faster replacement cycles, less investment in permanence. I understand the logic. I just wonder what we lose when fewer objects around us are built with the assumption that they'll still be here, still working, still ours, decades from now.