Made To Break - An Analysis (Pt. 2)

I said it before and I'll say it again - Giles Slade's "Made To Break: Technology and obsolescence in America" is a very interesting book. Slade has a writing style that can be interesting, entertaining, and even humorous at times. His social commentary on technological obsolescence is engaging in the second third of his book, even more so than in the beginning. It is a continued history of planned obsolescence, particularly in America. The second third of the book begins with the story of the radio, beginning in the early 1930s. I was interested in this story because it tied into my Media Systems and Processes class from last semester, with Prof. Steve Miller. We learned all about the story of David Sarnoff and the early NBC and CBS rivalries. In the second chapter of this reading, Slade offers more examples of different product's use of planned obsolescence as their saving grace - my favorite example being DuPont's nylon stockings, which implemented textured and patterned stockings to allow for yearly fashion changes.

Essentially, the takeaway from this story is that any producer of goods, no matter if they want to or not, must effectively use planned obsolescence to stay in the collective noosphere of their consumers - if they don't, they will be ousted by their competitors that do. An example of this is Henry Ford, who did not want to make any of his creations obsolete, but was forced to due to pressure from General Motors. This is something that has existed throughout human history, became significantly more common throughout the 1900s, and will continue to increase today and into the future.

Nearly everything has a planned date of obsolescence - one example of this is the Google Android smartphones available on the market today. The promised ideals of the open-sourced Android operating system allowed phones of all different hardware to have a fast, attractive, up-to-date system. However, critics of the OS have cited its "fragmentation" - that is, the hardware makers' slowness to update to the latest available version of Google's Android source code. Why do the hardware makers do this, when they know the users likely want the most up-to-date system available? Because they are afraid you won't buy a new phone in two years if your old one still runs the newest software perfectly fine. They have a point, but it is not good for the consumers.

Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to be changing any time soon.

Made to Break: Pt.1 of 3

I really enjoyed the first third of Giles Slade’s Made To Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. The first half mostly consists of a few examples of the history and coming of technological obsolescence in America. Typically I don’t much enjoy the history portions of the books we have read for this class so far - I prefer reading about modern day examples, they are somewhat easier to relate to. This, however, was a bit different. I thought it read very easily and was quite interesting; I particularly enjoyed the stories of the first disposable products and the competition between Ford Motor Company and General Motors. Henry Ford prided himself for his cars’ durability, saying “We want the man who buys one of our cars never to have to buy another.” As Slade writes, “He was adamant in his determination to provide America car buyers with more than fair value, and they responded with enormous brand loyalty.” (Slade 32) Though this was admirable, it was Alfred Sloan of GM’s use of obsolescence and style marketed towards women that made their cars tremendously more popular than Fords’. While Ford continued to innovate in safety aspects, GM’s style eventually forced Ford to switch to a model of planned upgrades to a car’s aesthetics every year to three years.
This type of obsolescence continues today, and is pervasive in near-any product the average American customer buys every day. It is still true of cars, as well as every electronic, from laptops to headphones. Also true is the idea of different classes first introduced by Sloan in GM cars - when your electronic dies, you are likely to want to “upgrade” to a better model than your last. I’m sure I’ll learn more about more modern examples, which I am excited for; Slade’s style of writing lends itself to easy, fun reading.

Current Event solo presentation - an analysis

This past week, I was up to speak in front of the class for my solo current event presentation. Mine was on Ross Rubin of Engadget’s editiorial “Switched On: Why the digital hub died”. (http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/11/switched-on-why-the-digital-hub-died/) In a nutshell, it takes an look back on the 2000 Macworld Expo, where Steve Jobs gave a presentation about his vision for the future of Apple Computers. During this speech, he mentions important partners like the Rio MP3 player and Palm V, which, ironically, were eventually beaten in the market by Apple’s iPod and iPhone, respectively. He also spoke of the PC as a “digital hub”, or as a main storage space for your mobile devices to connect. This is an interesting speech because it is not the way the market has gone, instead flocking to the cloud as a “hub” for your information. Apple has become a mobile devices company, with more of their revenue coming from iPods, iPads and iPhones than Macintosh devices. One of the lines from this article that express its arguments best follows: “The recent Apple TV reboot clearly demonstrates the shift away from PC-centricity to cloud-centricity. At its introduction, Apple TV was an iTunes peripheral, much like the iPod. It synced with a computer (albeit over a network connection as opposed to a USB cable), which was responsible for procuring or managing the media. In its latest iteration, though, AppleTV has moved from the iTunes ecosystem to the iOS ecosystem of mobile devices. While it can still stream media from a PC, it doesn't require one, and its video acquisition model is based on rental so as to be free from the rigors of managing storage.” (Rubin). I brought these facts up to the class, along with one from the Did You Know series of videos, saying that the mobile device will be the primary Internet connection for the world by 2020. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8&feature=player_embedded) I asked the class - is the PC dead? Only three or four students expressed that they still owned a desktop computer, with many using laptops. Of the ones who did, they said it was business supplied; another mentioned their next computer wouldn’t be tied to a desktop. I then asked, what comes after the laptop? Is the smartphone the new laptop, if the laptop is the new desktop? Will we one day see the death of the laptop and the move to iPads and phones as our main computers and all of our information in the cloud? Google’s Chrome OS is counting on such a future. It only remains to be seen when that will happen.

Wikipedia Analysis pt 2

This week we were supposed to read the second half of Andrew Dalby’s “The World and Wikipedia: How we are editing reality”. The second half of the book picks up where the first left off - it’s very interesting to read. I think it’s a break away from the norm for me to be reading such current texts - too much Shakespeare during high school, perhaps. That said, the second half of the book is a bit more interesting than the first. In the beginning, he talks briefly about the history of the idea and etymology of the first encyclopedias, as well as their successors into the current Wikipedia and its competitors. The most talked about of these competitors is the Encyclopædia Britannica. It is one of the world’s largest and currently the world’s most respected scholarly English encyclopedia. It is throughout the book talked about as if it is already dead, a staple of an era gone by. In many ways, this is true. The model of full-time, paid editors and scholarly contributors can not keep up with the quantity of writing the collaborative Wiki software can amass. However, this model has a few major flaws. The idea that anyone can edit or create new articles allows for new contributions to be made incredibly quickly, which lets Wikipedia become a fairly reputable news source. However, it also means that it can easily become susceptible to vandalism. While Wikipedia has some efforts in place to curb vandalism, some will always fall through the cracks. As Dalby writes, “Vandalism could be quite largely prevented by insisting that users register before editing. but that’s an extremely bad idea because great numbers of useful edits of all kinds, including the first reports of many major events, come from users who can’t log in, don’t want to, don’t dare to, or think they haven’t time.” This leaves Wikipedia at an impasse. This is largely the reason why Wikipedia is typically not respected by academia as a scholarly resource. However, this will eventually change. Wikipedia is gaining more respect every day, and will eventually kill all of its competitors. It is at that time that Wikipedia will be used in universities and studies.

Wikipedia: Analysis pt. 1

This week's assigned reading was on Andrew Dalby's "The World and Wikipedia: How we are editing reality". I have to say, this is my favorite book assigned this semester. It offers a brief history of encyclopedias as well as both the negative and positive aspects of using Wikipedia. One point of interest he wrote about was Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View guidelines, which indicate that articles should be written without bias. Of course, it is quite difficult to do this for any human. Dalby managed to write objectively throughout the book thus far, which I thought was interesting. I would have expected a lot of fanfare for the positive aspects of Wikipedia; Dalby wrote extensively and provided many examples regarding the dissenters of Wikipedia. He speaks of the story of John Seigenthaler, whose Wikipedia article’s biography included mention of his suspected involvement in the Kennedy assassinations, which was thoroughly false. Wikipedia’s administrators chose to disallow anonymous creation of articles after that particular event, though it kept anonymous editing of created articles. One aspect I found particularly interesting was that Reference.com and Answers.com downloaded Wikipedia’s data and showed it as their own, making it much more difficult for Seigenthaler to remove the false statements about himself from their databases. Dalby writes: “The two mirror sites, Reference.com and Answers.com, were much harder for Seigenthaler to deal with. Their pages could not be edited. They went on displaying the offensive text for some weeks, until the next Wikipedia download arrived.” (Dalby 59) This shows that even in its infancy, with rumors flying of its legitimacy, other websites were created devoted only to mimicking Wikipedia.
The book thus far contrasts interestingly with Postman’s Technopoly, last week’s reading. Dalby writes with a much more objective touch to his writing, allowing himself to see both the negatives and positives of Wikipedia. Postman, on the other hand, is a true and proven Technophobe. He fears the embracing of technology our culture has shown, and wishes for it to stop.
This book broadens my knowledge on the impact of Wikipedia on our culture, and the ramifications of having generally correct information at our fingertips, 24/7. I expect for this to be touched on more in the second half of the book, but I am interested to err away from the history of Wikipedia and predict the future and how it will create it for us.

Technopoly: An Analysis (pt. 2)

The beginning of the second half of “Technopoly” begins just like the first; there are insults to public wisdom disguised among wordy sentences. He starts out the back 9 of the book with the following passage: “That American Technopoly has now embraced the computer in the same hurried and mindless way it embraced medical technology is undeniable, was perhaps inevitable. And is certainly most unfortunate”. For a humanist, Postman really doesn’t seem to have much faith in the average American citizen to make an informed decision about technology. To him, we must all appear to be wide-eyed patrons of Las Vegas every time we enter Best Buy – too preoccupied with blinking lights to worry about any implications of our purchases.

The same vibe continues from the beginning of the book. Postman writes with a holier-than-thou attitude, speaking with disdain when discussing the benefits of any technology or the average person, but speaking a bit more excitably when discussing the detriments of technology on a culture or when providing examples to pad his argument. Unfortunately, I’m not buying it. It simply is not becoming of someone to argue so feverishly against technology, without allowing any acceptance of its benefits, then to continue to think of oneself as fair and unbiased on the subject of such arguments. Postman is a “Technophobe”, through and through.

It is even more obvious when compared to Swedin and Ferro’s “Computers . . . “ As I discussed in my last post, they write very happily about their subjects, almost seeming sated just to be caught up in the history and future of technology – Postman, on the other hand, seems like he’d be happier if we lived in the Stone Age. It is quite obvious I don’t like the author of this book, nor the way he discusses his subjects. However, I do appreciate one aspect of the novel – its excessive use of interesting (though not always valid) examples to “support” his points. Though Postman surely puts his own spin on them, they serve as interesting little stories to break up the otherwise monotony of the book.


-kevin

Technopoly: An Analysis

Neil Postman starts the beginning of one chapter in "Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology” with “Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. This requires the development of a new kind of social order, and of necessity leads to the rapid dissolution of much that is associated with traditional beliefs.” (Postman 71) This is the basis of Postman’s arguments throughout the beginning of the book.

Thought it appears a bit wordy at first, the book is an interesting read. Postman starts the book off by buttering himself up a bit, whilst talking about Technophiles, …one-eyed prophets who see only what new technologies can do and are incapable of imagining what they will undo.” (Postman 5) He asserts that the majority of the public these days are Technophiles. Opposing the Technophiles are the Technophobes, with averse opinions. Though Postman makes very clear the vast problems with being a Technophile, he makes quite clear that he is in no way one of them. Instead, he believes he is in between, a middling mind whose wisdom allows him to see both sides of the argument. Though he makes some good arguments throughout the paper and obviously knows the subject matter, I feel a bit more humility would have been less distasteful. I came off not wanting to listen to what he had to say, regardless of its truth. Nonetheless, the book is required reading, so I trekked onward. Throughout the book he makes continual reference to the story of Thamus the King and Theuth the inventor; in Postman’s analogy Theuth is the Technophile and he himself is the King. See what I mean about humility? The King has the wisdom to be able to see the repercussions, both positive and negative, of many of Theuth’s inventions, the most touched upon being the written language.

I found the differences between “Technopoly” and Eric Swedin and David Ferro’s “Computers: The Life Story of a Technology” to be very interesting; not the subject matter, but the way the authors made clear their feelings for the technology they were writing about through their words. Postman spoke with almost a disdain for the technology he was writing about, as well as the American people. I was not surprised to see that he was 61 at the time of the writing of “Technopoly” and often considered a Luddite by many of his critics. Swedin and Ferro, on the other hand, spoke with an almost fervor for the computers they wrote of. It was almost a rush to read “Computers . . . ”, as it was written with such ardor.

Though I appear to be ripping into this novel thus far, it has made some interesting and thought-provoking points. Hopefully the second half does more of that.