SOCIAL: Fwd: Introducing iPhone 4.

[Tom Radulovich]

After I sent this, I looked around at the dead electronics in view,  
and tried to imagine the tons and tons of water, oil, coal, ore,  
trees, etc. that went into making them, and the tons of carbon  
dioxide, soot, mine tailings, fly ash, hydrocarbon sludge, etc. that  
they left as waste; it would fill the room I am in several times over  
- perhaps the entire building! Sobering.

Then I think about my aunt's KitchenAid mixer, or my grandmother's  
chairs, flour sifter, and rolling pin, which still serve me well  
although they are all older than I am.

Some folks are thinking about designing things in very different ways.  
Worldchanging had an article about designing for durability and  
continued usefulness –  "heirloom design" which I quite liked. Think  
about a fine pen or a watch you can imagine leaving to your  
grandchildren (or grandnieces and grandnephews)

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009630.html

I imagine that at some point, technology will stabilize, and many  
devices will do pretty much everything you need them to do, and do it  
elegantly. Apple makes quite elegant products, if not particularly  
durable ones. Maybe one day there will be the mobile phone equivalent  
of the KitchenAid mixer, that will last for decades.

On Jun 7, 2010, at 5:03 PM, Amandeep Jawa wrote:

> What Tom said is how it is.
>
> I will only add that that is why Apple has very consciously moved to  
> making things out of high grade aluminum and glass rather than  
> plastic.  We have pointed out numerous times that we do this because  
> these materials (particularly the high grade versions we use) are  
> sought after in recycling because they are the most valuable.
>
> I'm not saying that is everything, but it is something.
>
>
> On Jun 7, 2010, at 4:40 PM, Tom Radulovich wrote:
>
>> It's an excellent point, Palak. These machines are the product of a  
>> culture that plans in obsolescence. Even if you want to hold on to  
>> them (as I do, not necessarily out of virtue, but rather because I  
>> am cheap, and don't like to have to learn how to use new gadgets)  
>> they aren't made to last, or the company that makes them quickly  
>> stops supporting them. As I write this, I am sitting in an office  
>> with four non-working printers that need to be disposed of. I just  
>> took a bunch of mobile-phone chargers to Goodwill for electronics  
>> recycling yesterday, and was reminded of how wasteful (and  
>> expensive!) it is that every phone seems to have a unique charger –  
>> while I understand that the EU now requires that all phones sold in  
>> Europe from now on have a standard charger, it seems a way off here  
>> in the US.
>>
>> I started reading John Thackara's book, In the Bubble, which is  
>> about design. He has a great chapter on how much waste that the  
>> electronics industry generates:
>>
>> "Apart from its impact on the wider economy, information technology  
>> is heavy in itself. It's a heavy user of matter in all the hardware  
>> needed to run it. One of the hidden costs of the misnamed sillicon  
>> age is the material and energy flows involved in the manufacture  
>> and use of microchips. It takes 1.7 kilograms of materials to make  
>> a microchip with 32 megabytes of random-access memory - a total of  
>> 630 times the mass of the final product. The "fab" of a basic  
>> memory chip, and running it for the typical life span of a  
>> computer, eats up eight hundred times the chip's weight in fossil  
>> fuel. Thousands of potentially toxic chemicals are used in the  
>> manufacturing process. A single microchip is, it is true, a small  
>> thing – on its own. But there are a lot of them about – and many  
>> more to come. Promoters of ubiquitous computing promise us that  
>> trillions of smart embedded devices are on the way.
>>
>> " The ecological footprint of computing is not limited to the  
>> chips. The manufacture of electronic devices also involves highly  
>> intensive material processes. A great deal of nature has to be  
>> moved during the production of communications equipment. Many  
>> components require the use of high-grade minerals that can be  
>> obtained only through major mining operations and energy-intensive  
>> transformation processes. One of the most startling pieces of  
>> information brought to light in Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and  
>> Hunter Lovins' Natural Capitalism is that the amount of waste  
>> matter generated in the manufacture of a single laptop computer is  
>> close to four thousand times its weight on your lap. Fifteen to  
>> nineteen tons of energy and materials are consumed in the  
>> fabrication of one desktop computer. To compound matters: As well  
>> as being resource-greedy to make, information technology devices  
>> also have notoriously short lives. The average compact disc is used  
>> precisely once in its life, and every gram of material that goes  
>> into the consumption or production of a computer ends up rather  
>> quickly as either an emission or as solid waste. In theory,  
>> electronic products have technical service lives on the magnitude  
>> of thirty years, but thanks to ever-shorter innovation cycles, many  
>> devices are disposed of after a few years or months."
>>
>>
>> On Jun 7, 2010, at 3:55 PM, palak joshi wrote:
>>
>>> I am not sure if i am supposed to feel like this but I do anyway.   
>>> Maybe someone will have an explanaiton that will make me feel  
>>> better.
>>> I do understand evolution and how things get better with  
>>> time..after usage and with new technology. But i cant help but get  
>>> a little upset over the fact that the iphone that i had excitedly  
>>> bought a couple of years ago is now 'outdated'. It doesnt have any  
>>> of the things that 4 g (right) have!
>>> Am I supposed to stay committed to my existing phone (its  
>>> cracked!) or go for the better one? When does one 'settle down'  
>>> with a technology...does that happen when one dies or when one  
>>> doesnt have any money ...and to me both sound like extreme.
>>> What is the fine line between consumerism and getting excited with  
>>> new technology? I have had these qustions bother me many times...I  
>>> would love to talk about it if any body else feels the same  
>>> way..if not i will wait around for the next topic on social  :)
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Amy Muller <amymuller at gmail.com>  
>>> wrote:
>>
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.deeptrouble.com/pipermail/social-deeptrouble.com/attachments/20100607/a41999f6/attachment-0002.htm>