A discretionary item becomes essential

Have you ever noticed that some items overtime goes from luxury or discretionary item to the must have or essential item that you cannot live without. This has been happening more and more as the relentless pursuit of technology have made it essential to have things which were discretionary in the past. Take for example cell phones. Before the cell phones, we use to have pay phones and it went very well for a long time. If you wanted to talk, you just put a coin and talk to anybody you want and there was no instant urge to call every five minutes or every time you needed to talk to someone. But now cell phones have become the very essential part that one cannot live without. Now we cannot even leave our homes without checking first that we have our cell phones with us. It is the instant part of getting in touch with your loved ones or anybody at any part of day from anywhere without having to look for coins to insert in the pay phone that makes it very essential. Same goes with computers, as every home have to have one and if we don’t have one then you look so ancient. Washing machines, dryers, cars, cameras, TVs and all sorts of appliances that was considered a luxury not too long ago have becomes so essential that a house without one of them is not considered complete and this raises the specter of all the power that we use during the day. So as the times change, the discretionary item becomes essential and it is rare that an essential item will ever revert to being a discretionary item.