Maybe We Just Need a New Word: Gadget

"Samsung has just announced at Barcelona a new cell phone, the Beam, that they expect to have on the market this summer. Its special feature is a built-in pico projector, making it a combination cell phone and (very wimpy) video projector. A cute gadget, although not one that I am likely to have much use for. I do, however, have one suggestion for improving it."

Reading through this news, I am happened to be interested in the word Gadget: Two similar explanations can be easily referenced from dictionary:

(1) an often small mechanical or electronic device with a practical use but often thought of as a novelty;

(2) any object that is interesting for its ingenuity or novelty rather than for its practical use.

So it comes to me as a question, have we been proposing and digging Gadgets in econometrics and economics? This could happen to be a 'gadget' question, but it is definitely not a 'gadget' issue. Too many people are publishing papers which probably are going to have its author(s) as the only and last careful reader. So why we spend one or two years, even three years to invent such a "gadget"? For tenure, for promotion or just for fun (self understanding of the subjects)? Maybe it is just for a popular social demand of vanity, maybe it is just an indispensable part of the system, who knows?