when is progress too much?

Though a lot of fun to play with and show off with, I'm not sure adding all sorts of new capabilities in mobile phones is such a good thing. First, I'm getting a little uncomfortable with the increasing popularity of bombarding us with ever more E-M waves, and second, wave after wave of new cellphone technology certainly isn't good for the environment:

If there must be new models with new gimmicks every few months, why can't there be a single charger or transformer that can be used interchangeably by all companies' products and from year to year? Why can't there be some sort of standard? How technologically advanced is a cord such that it must be replaced with a new model every six months? The proliferation and sheer waste of this type of practice is mind-boggling.

Someone has to pay for all those disposable cords, chargers and adapters, to say nothing of the products themselves. That someone is all of us. And not just for the product, but also for the pollution created when it's made and disposed of - right back into the biosphere. It's time for producers to take responsibility for their products' entire life cycles and not just pretend like they can wash their hands of the problem when it goes out the door.
-David Suzuki