Giles Slade. Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Giles Slade opens this monograph with a flurry of astounding facts: in 2004, 315 million working PCs were thrown out in North America alone, and in the following year over 100 million cell phones joined them on the trashheap. That’s tons of electronic equipment–larded with non-biogradable components and toxic waste–filling up garbage dumps around the world.
What drives this rush to trash? According to Slade, it obsolescence, rather than failure. Your last computer likely didn’t wear out–you junked it because a faster, lighter, and spiffier one came out.
Since the Great Depression, it’s been clear that consumption, rather than production, drives the economy. With America getting more efficient at producing goods, it follows that, to precent another economic downturn, someone has to convince people to buy more goods.
Slade traces the roots of “repetitive consumption back to the beginnings of branding and packaging in the middle of the 19th century. Over time, the American ethic of thrift collapsed before social pressures to buy new, rather than save the old. The first several chapters nicely sketch the cultural changes–and their underlying economic drivers–that created the annual model change. Similarly, producers began obliquely discussing “planned obsolescene.” This could mean, in the case of automobiles, that the customer would decide on his own to buy a more up-to-date car in the latest model, or, in some cases, that internal components unable to be replaced would fail after a set lifespan. “Death dating” products was a controversial practice, but many in various industries (particularly consumer electronics) supported it.
The author is at his best when he is talking about the pivotal players–such as GM’s Alfred Sloan and RCA’s David Sarnoff–and the modern development of planned obsolescence. He also deftly handles the transition from mechanical obsolescence to psychological obsolescence–the thing that makes some people buy a new car every two years, despite the fact that their old one still works fine. Advertising and marketing efforts convinced the public that, in almost every case, newer was better. Slade uncovers just how our disposable goods, from razors to Razrs, came to be.
The book veers slightly in a chapter on “Weaponizing Obsolescence,” which details a compex scheme under which American counter-espionage agents allowed the Soviets to “steal” plans for technology that was designed to fail. While it’s a compelling story–you can easily see that this is a screenplay in the making–it takes the book a little off course, and might have been better as a standlone article or book in its own right. Also, there might have been more discussion of another force driving disposable electronics: rising wages and lower costs of finished goods. The parts needed to repair your broken DVD player are probably not expensive, but buying an hour of a trained mechanic’s time to repair it is likely more than the original cost. Therefore, it makes more sense to throw it out and buy anew than to get it fixed. Surely, that’s got just as much to do with the rise of disposabiltiy as clever marketing.
All in all, this is a good book that raises many troubling questions, particuarly this one: what are we going to do with all of our “obsolete” trash? I recommend it for anyone who’s interested in the history of technology, the economy, or consumer electronics.