inkbluesky

Hittin the road larger

This is just strange. For months I would directly blog these photos from flickr and they would automatically line up nicely on the left side. Now if I blog from flickr they go to the right side and I have to go in and change the HTML to make it align left. I’d leave it on the right, but that also for some reason screws up the text alignment. This particular photo has a very nice composition and excellent use of background blur, but hitchhiking is literally gambling with your life. In other words don’t think this looks cool, I’ll go try it, you may end up on one of those missing person posters.

Disposing with Disposability 

The electronics industry has become pretty trashy business. The Environmental Protection Agency cites estimates that 130 million cell phones are thrown out in the United States each year and 250 million computers will be out-of-date in less than five years. These figures aren’t surprising when you consider the races between companies to release faster computers, flatter televisions, and fancier cell phones as quickly as consumers can whip out their credit cards. Chalk it all up to “planned obsolescence,” the strategy of deliberately building a product that quickly loses its usefulness so that consumers will line up for the newer, better model. In a new book, Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America (Harvard University 2006), Giles Slade traces the history of planned obsolescence in the United States from the throwaway paper shirt collars of the 1800s to today’s pricey iPods and BlackBerrys, those constantly evolving high-tech gadgets that are under warranty for only a year.

Interesting interview, but he does start out on what I think is an exaggeration about rudeness in North America, i.e. Canada, The United States, and Mexico( some include Latin America). I’m pleasant to people that I carry out transactions with, but frankly I just don’t have the time to go through some multi-step bargaining process. Like most people I have things to do or at least imagine I do.

It might be that it’s just the raw expense of their products. But, for sure, competition drives planned obsolescence. Competition drives the invention and development of new options that appeal to people and make them want to trade up. But it’s gotten to a ridiculous extreme. I think in Japan most people replace their cell phones after eight months. It’s stupid.

What strikes me as peculiar about the electronics and tech, and what seems to be an embrace of obsolescence is how that is at odds with the rejection of fashion for fashion’s sake. Most people that I know under 35 do not care that much about labels and tend to really love jeans, skirts, shirts, t-shirts, etc that they’ve had for a while. Stuff that they’ve taken good care of, but have broken in. Yet many of them feel the opposite about electronics and cars. I think the backlash about designer clothing happened because of the realization that many of us were investing too much in our clothes. It took some years for us as a culture to come around to that POV. Maybe we’ll turn the corner on things like cell phones and mini media players too.

Not that I’ve heard. I’d love for them to have some sort of plan. They’ve mandated a group called NEPSI [National Electronic Product Stewardship Initiative] to come up with environmental legislation that would cover the take-back and recycling of analog televisions and other e-waste. But NEPSI was an organization that included the stakeholders — the electronic manufacturers — and they stymied the whole process so that eventually they came out with this non-agreement. No legislation came out of it.

Of course once they sell a product they feel that is where their responsibility ends. Until they wise up so to speak people will have to take it upon themselves to self educate. Who sells stuff that is easier to recycle, that has fewer toxic components, who has a genuine recycling program ( not a program that ships your old monitor to a landfill in Africa), or who is selling a product that seems like it will last and perform well longer.