final third of "Made to Break" - comments

Giles Slade’s “Made to Break: Technology and obsolescence in America” remains one of my favorite books this year. It is well-written, and talks about the history and future of manufacturing products designed with a defined lifetime in mind, which is a break from the past. One hundred years ago, products were made to last as long as possible - it was a “lifetime guarantee” that was also a selling point for that manufacturer’s product. However, this all changed with the advent of the 21st century. Henry Ford’s Model T was the last car of a dying era of cars that could run for 50 years without a hitch. GM made cars with slightly changed interior materials, external body shapes, or external paint jobs every year - in an effort to make you want “the new hotness”. In a nutshell, it was a fantastic success. Every industry adapted to this moneymaking model - the fashion industry, the toy industry, et cetera. In the closing third of Slade’s book, he goes even further into detail on these topics.
In the final chapter of the book, he dedicates an argument towards the behemoth of planned obsolescence - consumer cell phones. Land line phones, manufactured since halfway through the 21st century, have always been thought of in the “buy one til you die” model for most consumers. Unless it broke, land line phones generally were used forever - with some exceptions (push button phones, the advent of voice mail and caller ID). Cell phones, however, are the exact opposite. Most consumers buy a new one every 18 months to two years - regardless of how well their current phone is working. Now, as cell phones become more complex their lifetime obviously decreases, but this is a two-part problem. Phones don’t last very long, and consumers are killing them off before their already short lifetime is up. “In the United States, cell phones built to last five years are now retired after only eighteen months of use.” (Slade 261) This is definitely a problem, but with technology for cell phones evolving at such a rapid pace (and there certainly isn’t a plateau in sight), there appears to be no way to “fix” it.



-kth