Thou Shalt Consume: The Story of Consumer Electronics [Feature]
by Tina Sieber
I freeze as I see the screen. A panic rises in my head. This can't be! Immediately, control kicks in. Breathe. Think. Act. Still in denial of what I see, I hard reboot the laptop.
I'm surprised by how calm I am as the display lights up and the lines are still flickering across the screen. I locate a crack on the side of the LCD. In my head I go through my packing routine. Yes, this end usually sits at the bottom of my backpack. So I did damage the laptop when I slipped on the ice earlier that morning. Why now?
I take a deep breath. Beautiful Full HD display, barely a year old; now it is toast. Calm, but gutted I reach for my phone and hack in an email to Mark. I won't make my deadline today.
Ironically, this episode happened during final revisions of the article you are now reading.
Introduction
Every year, consumer electronics exhibitions around the world present new high tech devices; expensive toys that come with many promises. They aim to make our lives easier, more fun, super connected, and of course they are status symbols. Moreover, they are an electronic manifestation of the ideals that drive our society: bigger, better, faster, more.
On the bright side, high-end electronics demonstrate advanced engineering and stunning design solutions. However, novelty tends to fade quickly. Only a few months later the hardware is outdated, the design is stale, and the shelves are stocked with fresh models. Nothing ages as quickly and permanently as consumer electronics.
Gadgets get discarded at ever faster rates and account for millions of tons of consumer electronic waste every year. To feed production, more and more resources are claimed and we are beginning to suffer from the immense burden on the natural and social environment.
What is the purpose of driving the technological advancement? Does it help us create something that will last? Where are we going so fast? We don't know. Or do we?
The Bonding
Jane* carefully places the laptop on her living room table. It's a used HP that a friend gave to her. Jane is excited about the prospect of using the Internet from her wing chair, rather than having to crunch in front of the old desktop in her bedroom.
Jane has family all over the country and many friends around the world. She loves to stay in touch with them and finds that the Internet is a blessing. One of her grandchildren set her up on Facebook, but she found it too confusing. However, she happily uses Skype, email, browses the Internet, plays games, and does online banking. Now she curiously watches as I try to connect the laptop to her WiFi.
Image credits: Woman with Laptop via Shutterstock
For its owner, a new gadget is not just a financial investment; it also is a major time and not least an emotional commitment. Something new enters your life, you let it in, spend hours setting it up, trust it with personal data, dress it up with accessories, and share your most intimate experiences with it. It becomes an essential part of your daily routine and a bearer of secrets. Just imagine the horror if you lost your smartphone! We deeply depend on our tools and, even more so, we become emotionally attached.
The more we depend on our gadgets and the less we actually understand them, the more attached we tend to become. Jane for example uses her computer only for the most basic tasks. She is not well versed in technology and although she is careful, she often needs help fixing small bugs. Jane is a confirmed optimist and has many hobbies that keep her busy away from the computer, but she does get slightly frustrated when she is cut off from her far away friends.
Jane grew up in a small isolated town. Goods and the mail were delivered only once a week, the phone line that eventually came was precious. Being one of the younger siblings, she received a lot of hand-me-downs. Although she now can afford a more luxurious lifestyle, she still treats all her belongings with great care and believes in using things until they break. When things do perish, Jane wonders why it is so much cheaper to replace them with something new. And especially with consumer electronics, repairing is rarely an option. Jane shrugs it off as "that's the way things are."
From an engineer who learned his profession in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), I learn his peers prided themselves in producing only the best quality and they built devices that would last for decades. In principle, that is not different from engineers elsewhere. However, material resources were scarce and what these people did have was time; endless amounts of time.
"We worked on the first computer-operated tuner of the GDR. A microprocessor that converted the signal from analog to digital produced a 50 KHz error. The device was examined in detail and eventually someone identified the component that caused the error. A different type of plastic had changed the inductance of a coil. Changing back to the original plastic corrected the error." - Norbert Storch
Image credits: Computer Engineer via Shutterstock
Things are different today. Companies cannot afford to track down defects all the time; where possible quick fixes are applied. And the tools are different, too. A hardware loss today is often equal to an irreversible loss of personal data, including emotional pieces like photos and private messages.
Devices like laptops or smartphones are much more integral parts of our lives than the electronics of the past. We are in an intimate relationship with technology. Recall the last time you were saving up for and finally bought a new gadget. Wasn't it a little like this: You fell in love with a sexy design and promising features. Once you held it in your hands it was the most exciting thing you ever had. You got to know the new one through rose-colored glasses, you interacted with it every day, constantly trusting it with more private information, thereby bonding and deepening your relationship. And maybe you are still in the honeymoon phase with that latest acquisition of yours. But consider this: should serious issues surface, you are now committed.
Replacing a laptop or a phone then is a lot like breaking up. As issues deepen, you hold on and try to fix them. However, no counseling in the world can mend broken hardware or bridge serious software or hardware incompatibilities. There comes a time when you must part with your gadget. You know that migrating data will be a painful process. But once you get excited about the new one in your life, it's all forgotten. You're in love and everything comes easily.
The tendency to bond, even with lifeless objects, is very human and has served us well. Jane for example has had her desktop computer for many years. It's a piece of her home and part of her daily routine. If everything kept working reliably, she would never see the need to replace it. Such loyalty to a piece of hardware, however, can be a problem, both for the user and for companies that must sell to stay in business.
Built to Break?
What keeps our economy going is the perpetual transfer of money. Companies inherently depend on customers to buy their products. One questionable technique that has been said to sustain consumption is designing products to break prematurely.
The technical term for this approach is planned obsolescence. It describes an approach to consciously limit product lifetime through the use of weak spots or inferior material. The concept can also be extended to new software no longer running on older hardware or vice versa. Planned obsolescence guarantees lasting consumption and a growing economy at the expense of consumers.
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