Cell phones, pagers, and any amount of things that you can imagine have been a luxury at one point or another. At one point cell phones were so rare that they were a status symbol, much in the same way as a Commodore 64 or IBM PC JR. Now some two and half decades later we look at cell phones, computers, and just about everything that was once a luxury, as a major need. I remember being a middle school kid and seeing pager as a luxury and seeing pagers become a must a couple of years later.
I remember being in the cool kids club with my NEC pager with a giant screen. There was something special about having the same piece of equipment as a Doctor. I remember my father's pager had no screen, just a speaker, and some buttons on the side.
The fact is that while some luxuries will always remain just that their predecessors while simple were also luxuries. Let's talk about cars for a second, a Ferrari is a luxury but a Ford Model T was one too. Cars were a luxury as well at one point and in some parts of the world they are still luxuries by virtue of cost, taxes, and fuel.
Perhaps the next big necessity will be something cool like a hovercraft or spaceship, maybe a car that can be used as a blender. Life will always have special surprises for us.
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