Sometimes it takes a look backward to figure out how far we've come -- both in terms of technology and the business structure (i.e. pricing and terms) of the products and services that we buy. Comparing our previous world with the current world puts a lot of things in perspective.

Watching old sitcoms and movies is one way to do it. "Seinfeld," for example, is forever carrying around a cordless phone half the size of a shoe box with a telescoping antenna on it. Today, almost every phone can be hidden in the palm of your hands, and uses internal or at most a short antenna. And cell phones play a large part in many movies.

There are notable exceptions. My wife, while watching the 2009 movie "He's Just Not That Into You," noticed the lead female character spends her days talking on a 1960s fashion princess phone -- complete with a coiled cord.

But in the real world, the choice of phones is at least partially based on finances.

I finally got to throw out my saved receipts from 1999 recently, when I realized I was only paying $25 each month for my cell phone service. Of course, I was only getting 50 peak minutes and 50 off-peak minutes of talk time. That's not enough to get through a couple of days in 2009. And it included only one phone. Not every member of my family used a cell phone back then -- let alone spent all day sending text messages with that old LG phone.

Jump to 2005. My cell phone plan cost me $40 each month and gave me a whopping 400 minutes during the day and an unlimited number of minutes at night as well as unlimited calls to all other cell phones on the same network. Now we're talking -- but still not full-time, because 400 minutes doesn't get you far.

In 2005, my brother complained about my phone habits -- because I would call him on my voice over Internet phone and get free minutes to him. But he wanted to call my cell phone. That's the only way he could get free long distance minutes -- and I didn't want to waste my cell minutes. So I'd always need to call him back from my VoIP line to his landline.

In 2009, almost everybody around me expects to pay more than $200 each month for their cell phone service. They have phones for every member of their families, and each one has a lot of minutes. They spend their lives on their cell phones -- either talking or texting. So they need both types in unlimited quantity. It looks like e-mail access on cells and Web access also are becoming necessities. It's a good thing so many people have GPS mapping systems in their cars; otherwise, they'd be using more of their cell phone directional systems.

Cell phones aren't the only technologies changing in price structure. Internet connections are getting faster and cheaper. A price quote I got in December 1999 showed a 7.1 Mbps connection would cost me $320. This week, I ordered a 22Mbps connection for a new office that cost me only $99 even though it's three times faster. Internet prices, like traditional computer prices, seem to sink every year as technology gets better and faster.

Although it doesn't seem to be the same with cell phones, it is. The cost per message has gone down, and the general quality of the calls has gone up. But our appetite for cell services has changed, making us increase the amount we buy monthly. We simply choose to spend our money differently now.