SOCIAL: Fwd: Introducing iPhone 4.

Mon Jun 7 17:56:16 PDT 2010

I had to part with my Mom's Sunbeam mixer, as it just couldn't cream butter
anymore (it had had a good run, maybe even 35 years). Really made me sad,
though -- I learned to bake with it as a girl by her side (and got to lick
the batter off its beaters!). I also had to give up on my stepmother's old
'portable' Singer, when it couldn't be reliably repaired, but it, too, was
probably 40 years old. 

Don't get me started on shoes and clothing. I have dresses that are probably
40 and 50 years old and look fine, and my son has worn some of my brother's
baby clothes, which I know are 50 years old. I even have two blouses that
belonged to my grandmother, who was born in 1895. They are delicate but
still wearable. I have shoes and clothes that I bought as a teenager, too.
Have several of my Mom's old aprons ... the list goes on.

And furniture... what happened to building with real wood? Press board
doesn't last, and you can't give it away after a few years. (Sal Army will
not pick up press board furniture donations.)

The esprit de corps around keeping and reusing definitely seems to be
different now than it was when I grew up and when I was a young adult. I
think there's also a bit of a West Coast thing going on (too hard to schlep
antiques across the country). Maybe my family was unusual, maybe it's a
Midwestern thing, or maybe because I grew up with a grandmother who guided
her family through the Depression (including dealing with losing their
house), the belief that waste is sinful was instilled in me.

There's no doubt that obsolescence is planned into many products and plain
old low-quality is the rule for most others. I like to feel the years in a
tool and touch those memories when I hold it, though there's nothing wrong
with enjoying a new outfit or gadget too. It's important to have a balance.
Tom, I think your earlier caution about consumption is very on the mark. 

I'm not sure why/how the values around consumption and waste in this country
have changed so much since I was a kid, but maybe we can all spiral back to
less waste-creating beliefs in an even better form.

Erin

  _____  

From: social-bounces at lists.deeptrouble.com
[mailto:social-bounces at lists.deeptrouble.com] On Behalf Of Tom Radulovich
Sent: Monday, June 07, 2010 5:26 PM
To: Social
Subject: Re: SOCIAL: Fwd: Introducing iPhone 4.

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:

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