Fantastic work here Shaunak!

I think we really have to take it upon ourselves in the UI/UX space to deeply think about these issues, especially within the context of user experience.

Companies are acutely aware that novelty, variable reward, and relief of pain are the primary drivers of consumption, and this is leveraged as you pointed out, by building obsolescence into products and services.

Why bother doing it better if you can just make the current version suck that much more?

This creates an artificial gap between what the user has and what the user wants, even though they did nothing to precipitate this issue.

How can we combat this on an organizational level? How do we effectively push back against the low-hanging fruit which exploits people's ignorance and dependence upon technology?

These are the questions we should absolutely be asking, and I sincerely thank you for this awesome piece; very nicely done! :)