Upgrade Me

They are the everyday objects which apparently we can't live without.

Innovative gadgets that fascinate and entertain.

Shiny new devices that are constantly upgraded to be faster and more powerful,

with must-have new features.

# I'm the operator with my pocket calculator. #

'Millions of us have succumbed to the culture of upgrading.'

# I'm the operator with my pocket calculator. #

'I'm already on my tenth mobile.

'Why do so many of us...' Hello? '..covet the upgrade?'

Wrong number.

Is it really about functionality, the look, or the feel,

or is there some deeper psychology at work here, to do with status and desire?

Gadgets have changed our relationship with the world and rewired our perceptions.

As I writer, I'm interested in their impact on our imaginations.

It's really funky. 'This story will take me to the other side of the world...

'to the beating heart of the upgrade.'

The speed of product innovation continues to accelerate,

but is it sustainable?

And what's going to happen to all this stuff now?

'The future is digital, but is it beautiful?'

I am now very pleased to introduce someone who's written novels, short stories, television films.

Most recently he's written a book about how music has shaped his life. It's called "Gig".

And on top of all this, he's one of Britain's finest poets.

Please will you welcome Simon Armitage.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Hello. I'm going to start by reading a poem

about the pace of modern life and its effect on the brain

and its effect on the body, so it's a poem that goes very, very quickly

and it's called Killing Time Number 2.

Time in the brain cells Sweating like a nail bomb

Trouble with the heartbeat spitting like a sten gun

Cut to the chase, pick up the pace

No such thing as a walkabout fun run

Shoot yourself a glance in the chrome in the day-room

Don't hang about You're running out of space, son

Red light, stop sign Bellyful of road rage

Ticket from the fuzz if you dawdle in the slow lane

Pull up your socks Get out the blocks... VOICE FADES

If the pace of life HAS accelerated, one major factor might be

our obsession with keeping up with the speed of technological innovation.

I'm very happy with my new Smartphone...

I can communicate however, wherever and whenever I want.

But at other times, I wonder if gadgets make us frantic and anxious.

What drives our appetite to upgrade to the latest consumer technology?

And how has new technology changed our lives?

West Yorkshire, where I was born and live, was one of the cradles

of the Luddite movement, and back then technology was a dirty word.

Ironic, then, that without realising it,

I've become a bit of a technophile with my sat-nav, Smartphone and laptop.

And inside this little furry, blue pouch...

I keep this little, silver memory stick.

Every word that I've ever written is on that stick,

which is pretty extraordinary, and I don't even think I will ever fill it.

If I'm looking for evidence of upgrading, I needn't look much further than my own home.

Dumped in a drawer on the landing are my past purchases.

I suppose you could say that this drawer,

and several others like it in the house, represent the story of my upgrading thus far.

This is the archaeology of my upgrading.

I don't whether these are trophies, or whether it's a sort of, you know, detritus, or what.

This was my first laptop, which I actually feel quite sentimental about now.

Probably bought this about ten years ago.

But I was so proud of it and worried about losing it

that I used to hide it under the settee every night when I went to bed.

Sony Walkman, PDA, Palm Tungsten.

This was probably the most useless device I ever bought.

I was getting rid of a handwritten diary and transferring everything to this -

contacts, appointments, names, addresses, telephone numbers -

it was all going to be in here.

And also you had to learn a whole new Hieroglyphic language

before you could put information into it.

Who wants to do that, you know at age 40-plus, learn a whole new language,

just so they can write, "ten o clock, dentist"?

Excavating this drawer makes me question my attitude to technology.

Am I destined to carry on upgrading forever?

The digital revolution has crept up on us all.

It's now so common-place, we barely recognise it.

Last year in the UK, we bought a cool 24 million new phones.

It feels like the speed of upgrading is accelerating.

I've come to the John Lewis department store in Oxford Street, London.

Despite the credit crunch, in 2008, sales of consumer electronics

across John Lewis's 28 stores were up 3% on 2007.

Across Britain last year, we went on a technology buying spree of epic proportions.

We purchased six million digital cameras,

and seven million MP3 players...

..which must be music to the ears of retailers like John Lewis.

I know it's an odd thing to say in a shop, but everything looks very new,

you know, stuff that I haven't seen before.

How often do the ranges change in all these, you know, various gadgets and things?

Well, it varies slightly from product area to product area.

I mean, the one that you're standing next to here in computing, this changes four times a year

and it completely changes four times a year.

- So every three months, everything is changed here.

- Yeah, total new range.

That's probably the most rapid change that we see.

Areas like televisions and DVD recorders, that type of thing,

they normally change once a year but they have what they call a refresh, so pretty much every six months.

'The entire camera range changes twice a year too.

'It's mind-boggling how often everything is replaced.

'Within months your new gadget is so...

'yesterday?

'The living rooms of Britain have been transformed into home-entertainment emporiums,

'with a subwoofer behind every settee.'

And is there one particular product that's driving this whole thing, would you say?

I think, in the last five years, what's absolutely made people get excited about technology

is the TV, because there's been this fundamental shift

from the large box in the corner to something much slimmer and sleeker.

Also people don't seem to be bothered any more, that it's a bit like being sat in the pub,

you know, there's a sort of a 60 inch television there in the room.

Why do you think people buy technology?

Is it just need, or is it something else?

There is need, so, "The telly broke, I want a new one."

But for an awful lot of people it is about what their friends have got,

it's perhaps a status, and it's very much become part of our lifestyle.

So you see it in the media, you see it on television yourself,

and people start to think, "I must buy into that."

'The digital revolution has delivered uncountable gizmos and gadgets into the heart of our lives.

'And to some they bring status and credibility, implying as they do success, knowledge and power.'

When you're in this kind of Aladdin's cave of technology

it's almost impossible not be seduced into the idea of wanting something.

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