Apple's Steve Jobs, on yesterday's large price drop for the iPhone:

"That's technology."

It's a rather condescending attitude towards his customers -- certainly, if I paid $600 bucks for an iPhone a few weeks ago, and today it's $400, I'd be pissed.

But just like Sun's CEO told us back in 1999 to "get over" our privacy concerns, there's not only an inevitability about change today, but also a need. Change, for tech companies, is good: consumers lured into a constant cycle of need for the newest/coolest/fastest products. We all have joked about how we bought a computer, and it immediately became obsolete. The lastest iPhone pricing, though, may hit a new mark for technology obsolescence, taking only a matter of months for the "old" phone to become obsolete.

What's more concerning, of course, than the pricing on a single tech toy is how the increasing pace of technological change manifests itself as the increasing pace of cultural change, since technology and media are so intertwined in our lives.

It's a constant need for the new: a recurring amnesia in the news biz, as this week's "hot" story is forgotten for the next. Everything we wear becomes, like, so last year. The hottest song, the newest social networking site, the trendiest restaurant. On and on.

If anyone knows how to make all this stuff slow down, please let me know...

I'm away for about a week now, but roaring back to blogging with a post on...poop. Hikers heading up Mt. Whitney are now being issued "Wagbags", to pack out their, um, waste.

It seems like a neat little invention.

The Wagbags (WAG stands for Waste Alleviation and Gelling) are manufactured by Phillips Environmental Products in Montana and have been adopted by agencies including the Pentagon and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the company’s president, Bill Phillips.

...The Wagbag is actually two separate plastic bags. The inner one is a funnel-like bag with powder at the bottom. Water causes the powder to gel, encapsulating anything in the bag...

This kind of device will likely be a requirement not only in areas where they are removing luxurious high-altitude outhouses, but, I'd guess, increasingly everywhere in the great outdoors, as more and more people discover hiking and climbing and mountain biking. All great fun, but they all put a strain on our ever-dwindling resources -- more people equals more poop.