Americans spend absolutely stupid amounts of money on gadgets.Just when we think we’ve got the coolest MP3 player or the fanciest DVD player, the gods of electronics put something else on the market. It’s usually only marginally better than the version we already have, but that doesn’t matter — we must have it.Recent issues in the economy may force us to change our habits as our generation is hit with its first real taste of financial hardship.The abundance of technology allows even members of the lowest tax bracket to afford gadgets such as cellular phones and MP3 players. Yet as the U.S. enters a financial crisis, that ubiquity may begin to change.In recent years Americans have spent their hard earned money on electronic gadgets like there was no tomorrow. In fact, 2007 was a banner year for electronics spending.The NPD Group reports 47 percent of all consumer technology spending was focused on notebook computers, hi-definition televisions, computers, digital cameras and MP3 players. That spending is up from 42 percent in 2006 and 36 percent in 2005, but 2008 isn’t looking as promising.The Consumer Electronics Association predicted an increase of only 3.5 percent in consumer spending on gadgets for the forth quarter of 2008, according to an October press release. That increase is only half the jump made from 2006 to 2007.  The CEA also expects consumers to decrease their holiday spending by 14 percent for an average holiday total of $1,437 per family.Things may get even worse, and consumer spending on electronic gadgets will likely decrease further as the economic downturn intensifies.That’s pretty common economics sense — people don’t have the money to spend on extras so they don’t buy the extras.But there may be some social issues augmenting consumer spending — namely technological saturation.First off, technological saturation in this sense does not mean there is too much technology in our society.I’m no Luddite.We are surrounded  by technology every day. Most people interface with several marvels of modern technology before they even leave the house in the morning. We make coffee in our fancy programmable coffee pots, check our e-mail on laptop computers, listen to our MP3 players as we jog and probably make a few phone calls while in the car. We are so enveloped in technology that I imagine most people don’t even consider the car itself to be a technological innovation.The only way to avoid that lifestyle is to become Amish — and even then you will have to deal with technology at some point. But being surrounded by technology is not the same technological saturation.Technological saturation occurs when advancements in consumer technology reach a magical point where the general population is no longer concerned with any further advancement that does not display a significant benefit.We’ve all got friends who only use their cell phone for phone calls and can’t see the difference between Blu-ray and a regular DVD.  Technological saturation is like that, but on a much wider scale.Finances play a large role in this kind of saturation — empty pocketbooks would theoretically make consumers think twice about that shiny new cell phone that can also play MP3’s underwater.Yet that only explains the consumer side thought process. From the production side, decreases in new tech spending may mean changes in the research and development process.The development of new and shinier gadgets is not cheap, and those costs are usually passed onto the consumer. If the consumer is less willing to buy the newest gadget, that means reduced profits for the manufacturer.If technologically saturated Americans cannot find the money or desire to purchase new tech, the answer may lie in the leveraging of existing technologies.The model has worked well before.Apple slapped an LCD screen and a touch controller on a laptop hard-drive and created the iPod in 2001, and Nintendo took its previously existing Gamecube hardware and modified it to make the Wii system in 2006.Both companies went on to make millions from these aging technologies.The leveraging of existing technology can be beneficial to both the consumer and the producer. The user gets their new fangled gadget, and the producer reaps record profits. The technophile elite believe we should progress faster and bigger all the time. There is absolutely nothing wrong with progress, but there is also something to be said for working more efficiently. Leveraging existing technology sounds pretty efficient.—-Contact Skylar Gremillion at [email protected]