Tag: technology

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The conspiracy theory I find most believable is planned obsolescence.

Now, I don’t believe there is some mysterious timer buried deep inside my refrigerator, laptop, or television counting down the seconds until the warranty expires.

Although, some days, I wonder.

You know the moment.

The washing machine has been running faithfully for years. Then one morning it makes a noise usually associated with farm equipment, flashes an error code requiring an engineering degree to decipher, and stops working.

You call somebody.

They tell you what it will cost to repair.

You stare at the phone.

Then you ask the question we’ve apparently been conditioned to ask:

“Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to buy another one?”

And there it is.

That’s the part of planned obsolescence I find believable.

I’ve owned enough products over the years to notice that some things simply don’t seem to last the way they once did. Worse, when they break, repairing them has become increasingly difficult. Parts are proprietary. Components that once could be replaced individually are integrated into larger assemblies. Things are glued, soldered, sealed, or otherwise constructed in ways that make you wonder whether the person designing the product ever intended for another human being to open it.

Of course, there is a perfectly reasonable counterargument.

Technology changes.

I know that better than most.

My background is in technology, so I understand the necessity of hardware and software evolution. Standards change. Security requirements change. Operating systems evolve. Applications require more processing power and memory. Interfaces disappear. New technologies replace old ones.

Progress requires change.

I’m not standing in my front yard shaking my fist at the cloud because my fifteen-year-old laptop won’t edit 8K video.

There are limits.

What bothers me is the increasingly common assumption that because a machine can no longer perform the newest function, it no longer has a useful function.

Those are two very different things.

I currently have laptops running that are more than a decade old.

By modern standards, they’re obsolete.

Apparently, nobody told the laptops.

They still boot. They still work. They still perform the jobs I’ve assigned them.

Some of my older machines handle duties on an offline network where I store sensitive information. They don’t need access to every modern cloud service. They don’t need the newest browser. They don’t need enough processing power to generate the next Pixar movie before lunch.

In fact, there is something wonderfully ironic about it.

The machine considered too old for the modern internet may be exactly the machine I don’t want anywhere near the modern internet.

I also write on some of them.

Writing is apparently another activity that has become technologically demanding despite the alphabet remaining stubbornly limited to twenty-six letters.

For that job, I need a keyboard, a screen, reliable storage, and software capable of putting one word after another.

A computer built ten or fifteen years ago can somehow still manage this Herculean task.

So I repurpose my equipment.

That’s probably the systems side of my brain at work. I don’t ask an old machine to perform a job beyond its capabilities. I look at what it can still do reliably and assign it accordingly.

To me, that isn’t nostalgia.

It’s resource management.

Obsolescence should describe a machine that can no longer perform a useful function—not merely one that can no longer perform the newest function.

Software complicates the issue.

A perfectly functional piece of hardware can become effectively useless because the environment around it changes.

An operating-system update requires more resources. A manufacturer stops providing drivers. An application drops support for an older operating system. A browser becomes incompatible. Security requirements change. Eventually, the machine sitting on your desk hasn’t physically failed at all.

The world around it has simply decided it doesn’t belong anymore.

And again, some of that is necessary.

Security vulnerabilities are real. Developers cannot reasonably support every piece of hardware manufactured since Moses came down from the mountain. At some point, old architecture genuinely becomes incompatible with what we’re trying to accomplish.

I understand that.

What interests me is where necessity ends and economics begins.

Because a manufacturer doesn’t actually need to install a mysterious five-year self-destruct timer inside a device.

If the battery cannot reasonably be replaced, the parts aren’t available, the operating system is no longer supported, the applications stop working, and repairing the machine costs almost as much as replacing it, the economic result is exactly the same.

You buy another one.

No tiny corporate demon required.

And computers aren’t the only place I’ve noticed it.

Appliances, televisions, phones, automobiles, tools—there seems to be an increasing number of things we’re expected to replace rather than repair.

Some of that is perception, certainly. We remember the refrigerator that lasted thirty years and conveniently forget the piece of junk Uncle Leroy bought in 1986 that died before Reagan left office.

Survivorship bias is real.

But so is the changing relationship between consumers and the things we own.

Once, repair was an ordinary part of ownership.

Now repair can feel almost rebellious.

And manufacturers aren’t entirely responsible for that.

We participate.

That’s the uncomfortable part.

We’ve become accustomed to the upgrade cycle.

New phone.

New computer.

New television.

New feature.

New version.

New thing that does something we apparently desperately needed despite having survived the previous fifty years without knowing it existed.

Marketing departments don’t necessarily have to convince us that the old thing is broken.

They only have to convince us that it’s old.

Somewhere along the way, those words became synonymous.

Old.

Obsolete.

Useless.

They aren’t.

Eventually, everything reaches the end of its useful life. I don’t intend to keep a computer running simply because I can. There comes a point where the time, expense, security risk, or effort required to maintain something exceeds whatever usefulness remains.

Then you replace it.

That’s not planned obsolescence.

That’s reality.

But I try to make that decision myself.

Not because a commercial tells me.

Not because a software company has released version seventeen-point-whatever.

Not because somebody decided the machine on my desk has reached an age where it should quietly report to the nearest recycling center.

I decide whether it still has a job.

If it does, it stays.

Maybe that’s my small contribution to the rebellion.

Nothing particularly dramatic. No barricades. No manifesto nailed to the doors of Silicon Valley. Just my refusal to participate in the status quo when the status quo doesn’t make sense.

If something works, I use it.

If it breaks and I can reasonably repair it, I repair it.

If it can no longer perform its original job but remains capable of doing something useful, I give it another one.

So, do I believe in planned obsolescence?

Yes.

I just don’t think the conspiracy requires a secret room full of executives deciding precisely when my laptop should die.

That would almost be reassuring.

The truth may be considerably more ordinary.

Design products that discourage repair. Create an ecosystem that continually raises the definition of what constitutes “current.” Make replacement easier than maintenance. Then spend billions convincing consumers that newer automatically means better.

After that, you don’t need a mystery timer.

We’ll start the countdown ourselves.

Meanwhile, somewhere on my network, a laptop more than a decade old is quietly doing exactly what I asked it to do.

It doesn’t know it’s obsolete.

I’m not going to tell it.

Consider that my contribution to the rebellion.