Re:Engineers investigating NASA’s Voyager 1 telemetry data
by somenameforme on Thursday May 19, 2022 @11:21AM
(#31435869)
In modern times planned obsolescence is a normal part of business. The comments for the linked video [1] are awesome because it has so many people from different areas of industry (and academia) sharing anecdotes. So cartel? Probably not. Built to fail? Almost certainly. If we view things only through the lens of profit, then MTTF (mean time to fail) is just another curve to maximize against profit. If it's too short then your reputation will suffer and you'll lose money. If it's too long, then you're just leaving money on the table.
In our society the brilliant engineer is not the one who makes a thing that last for 50 years, but one that lasts for just long enough to avoid damaging your brand image, and also fails in a way that makes the consumer more incentivized to buy a new thing than try to repair their current one. The guy who came up with the idea of slowing old iPhones "to save battery life" is who the bonus+promotion is going to.
One of the biggest problems that has to be understood is that there is every incentive for money-driven governments to actively support planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence drives factors that we believe are indicators of a strong economy, like GDP. If people were able to stop endlessly buying the same things over and over, the "economy" would take an absolutely massive hit. And with it there would also be declines in employment, tax revenue, and everything else. This is one of the many examples where the socially detrimental relationship between government and big business isn't just based around corruption.
Of course our system, for all its flaws, also has its benefits. Like the old Soviet joke goes, "It may be true that the Americans have the biggest skyscrapers, but we have the biggest transistors!"
In our society the brilliant engineer is not the one who makes a thing that last for 50 years, but one that lasts for just long enough to avoid damaging your brand image, and also fails in a way that makes the consumer more incentivized to buy a new thing than try to repair their current one. The guy who came up with the idea of slowing old iPhones "to save battery life" is who the bonus+promotion is going to.
One of the biggest problems that has to be understood is that there is every incentive for money-driven governments to actively support planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence drives factors that we believe are indicators of a strong economy, like GDP. If people were able to stop endlessly buying the same things over and over, the "economy" would take an absolutely massive hit. And with it there would also be declines in employment, tax revenue, and everything else. This is one of the many examples where the socially detrimental relationship between government and big business isn't just based around corruption.
Of course our system, for all its flaws, also has its benefits. Like the old Soviet joke goes, "It may be true that the Americans have the biggest skyscrapers, but we have the biggest transistors!"
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE