<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">What Tom said is how it is.<div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>I'm not saying that is everything, but it is something.</div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Jun 7, 2010, at 4:40 PM, Tom Radulovich wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">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.<div><br></div><div>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:</div><div><br></div><div>"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 <i>trillions</i> of smart embedded devices are on the way.</div><div><br></div><div>" 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' <i>Natural Capitalism </i>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."</div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Jun 7, 2010, at 3:55 PM, palak joshi wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>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.</div> <div>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! </div> <div>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. </div> <div>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 :) <br> <br></div> <div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Amy Muller <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:amymuller@gmail.com">amymuller@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br> </div><br></blockquote></div><br></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>Social mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Social@lists.deeptrouble.com">Social@lists.deeptrouble.com</a><br>http://lists.deeptrouble.com/listinfo.cgi/social-deeptrouble.com<br></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>