Obsolescence III

In this third installment of my interpretation of Giles Slade's book Made to Break I would like to focus specifically on a chapter titled 'Weaponizing Planned Obsolescence'. Right off the bat, this chapter title grabbed my attention. I was hoping that it would ultimately be where Slade gets into the nitty-gritty of how planned obsolescence is used as a weapon by companies against its consumers (cause that would be some interesting stuff!). To my slight dismay it focused much more on how planned obsolescence affected the evolution of actual weapons, which is still pretty cool, I guess.

The chapter starts out comparing the evolution of technology in the US to that of the Soviet Union. I feel like this is worth mentioning mostly because it directly relates to a previous blog entry that I wrote about the importance of the integrated circuitry. Apparently the USSR was about 10 years behind technologically than the US and this put us at a HUGE advantage when it came to weapons manufacturing. So I feel that its fair to update that not only has the integrated circuit allowed for a huge boom in technology at the time of its creation, it also had a large contribution to the sociopolitical efforts of the time.

Things start to get interesting when the USSR, in desperate need of this new technology (US embargo is preventing them from receiving it at this time), resort to espionage to acquire it. This is where the whole idea of planned obsolescence starts coming into play. Gus Weiss, a security adviser at the time, came up with the idea to let the Soviets get a hold of the technology, but plan for it to be obsolete shortly thereafter. They sold the Soviets chips that appeared to be normal, but would eventually cause 'catastrophic malfunctions'. As dirty and deceitful as this was, it was also brilliant. This forced me to take a different perspective on the idea of planned obsolescence. I cannot shake my initial feeling that its wrong, but at least now I believe I have a more objective look at the topic, having the ability to see both the positive and the negative.

I want to bring up, as a final point another statement that was mentioned in this chapter that really stood out to me.

"When people are persuaded, advertised, propagandized, and victimized into throwing away their cars every three years, their clothes twice yearly... then we may consider most other things fully obsolete." (Slade pg. 228)

This quote pretty much sums up what I believe is wrong with planned obsolescence. Especially where we stand today technologically. Don't you think we owe it to ourselves to just slow down for a minute? I guess that is just not the nature of our society though. On the plus side, if it bailed us out of a recession once, perhaps it will work again.