planned obsolescence, and why the world is a beautiful place
image via opendirectories on tumblr
the song within the quotes that follow is "civilisation (bongo, bongo, bongo) by the andrews sisters & danny kaye"
🎶each morning, a missionary advertises neon sign🎶
🎶he tells the native population that civilization is fine🎶
the endless choices around us. flashing lights that tell us BUY, LOOK, CONSUME. and as if choice paralysis and psychological manipulation were not enough, the world now has obsolescence as a profit mechanism. manufacture a problem. sell the solution. who cares about convenience, accessibility and all that jazz, when there's a new shiny?
🎶and three educated savages holler from a bamboo tree🎶
🎶that civilization is a thing for me to see🎶
although, saying that the world "now" has that tool will be misleading. ever since human constructs like money and capital have had any value to people, we've had grifters intentionally screwing people over. in the hopes that if something breaks early, people will buy another one and the economy won't halt. when talking about the present day situation, specially in the world where technology gets shoveled onto our faces with different tags attached to it (see ai, wireless), planned obsolescence becomes a more complex matter of discussion. corporations that have an unfathomable amount of resources invested into studying human behavior and manipulative tactics shift market trends towards making older solutions obsolete, presenting something new, and watching - as the lack of class conscience makes the talking point who owns the solution and who doesn't, rather than what in god's name actually changed. this generalized process is drawn from one specific example. apple.
🎶they hurry like savages to get aboard an iron train🎶
🎶and though it's smokey and it's crowded, they're too civilized to complain🎶
long story short, airpods! let's move on!
🎶don't want no penthouse, bathtub, streetcars, taxis, noise in my ear🎶
🎶so, no matter how they coax him🎶
🎶i'll stay right here🎶
it's not hard to ignore the sort of obsolescence where something is taken away from a complete piece of hardware to sell a solution that reduces repairability to something trivial. but that is unfortunately not where all the problems with this end. neither it is limited to hardware any more. corporations see profits in compromises. introduction of gen ai in workflows and tech-layoffs, as a consequence of one person being able to do the job of a team, have become a silent agreement in the industry. that's where the sly, evil, "planned" aspect of it all ends and an unintentional, negligence-based form of obsolescence comes in. a world where collecting every piece of data one can isn't just a norm but a necessity to sustain, a world where there is enough bloat around to sink the ship of theseus we call an economy, a world where "necessities" are shoved down the throat of an average joe just to fit in to the society, a world where the only way to live a justifiably happy life is to psychologically exploit others, feed on their subconcious desires, manufacture their subconcious desires. does it get any more screwed up than that?
short answer long, yes, it will get a lot worse than this. we're redefining what the current generation reads, what they hear, what they learn. governments are hiding unemployement behind the veils of entrepreneurship. entrepreneurs are expected to use whatever buzzwords the current bubble has brought along with it. but... it can be an opportunity. we've had a million opportunities before to acknowledge the flaws with an economy that flourishes on vanities. but with everything wrong that i talked about, there's a silver lining. it does not have to consider who we are. a world where there's a psychological warfare on us, for our attention, also allows us to simply step out of the battlefield. vanities, bad as they sound, do play a role in us carving our ways through life. a swing hanging down a tree is a vanity.