Must Progress Slaughter All?

So today I attempted to buy a new cell phone. I use a pay-as-you-go service and my current phone has stopped doing the one thing that every other phone from Alexander Graham Bell on down has been supposed to do: Make and receive calls. Why? Who knows? Spent a morning with tech support and neither of us do. Bought a new one at the store where I had bought this one. It uses a different SIM card, which doesn't work in my ZIP code. Returned to the store and learned that none of the phones they sell use that kind of SIM card any more. An interesting bit of post-sale information to be sure.

I search from the company from which I buy my pay-as-you go plan. The chat agent says they no longer sell any phones which use the SIM card that works in my area. I need to buy any of a certain kind of phone -- a description full of jargon that has to be explained -- and in order to keep my phone # they can sell me the proper kind of SIM card, which he offers to do right now, "does that sound good?"

The technology and ability to make and receive calls anywhere is useful. So too, to a lesser degree, is texting. But the jump-through-hoopage swamp of constantly upgrading models making the device you're comfortable with obsolete, arbitrary system changes and the like, masked by a veil of games, toys and pretty, distracting brain softeners made me wonder, on my second trip back home this afternoon, whether I'd be all that upset if I flung this chunk of plastic into the river.

But then I remembered I would rather not litter...