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.