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Spikosauropod Profile
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Registered: 06-2007
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Re: An Observation About LAR


I can’t help but feel that you people are looking at this the wrong way.

The progenitor of planned obsolescence is Mother Nature. Anyone who has studied aging realizes that it is not an accident but deliberate programming that has been incorporated into our biology. Evolutionary biology has discovered that it is advantageous to the survival and advancement of a species that the old line get cleared out on a regular basis and replaced with a new line.

However, it goes deeper than that. People naturally seek new things. For example, there is a natural tendency of men to want “new” women; hence, the historical glorification of virgins. The desire for “new” things apparently has evolutionary advantages as well. Probably, the desire to get new purses, new cars, and new computers is just a side effect of this innate tendency.

The people who have implemented planned obsolescence and push people, in a variety of ways, to constantly upgrade are just imitating nature and exploiting a tendency that is already present. In doing so, they keep the economy humming and technology advancing.

Like most people, I sometimes wish I could just continue on as I have and not have to replace things that I am satisfied with. When my smart watch started to malfunction, Verizon informed me that it was still under warranty and that they would replace it free of charge. This was a surprise, because I felt that I had owned the same smart watch for a very long time. I told them that I wanted a watch exactly like the one I had, and they agreed to send one as soon as it was available. However, they did not have any in stock and I would have had to wait for quite a while. So, I opted to get a newer model. I am really glad that I did, because the new model is far better. Texting is easier, accessing apps is easier, and charging is easier and less problematic.

For me, the big lesson in all of this is that industry does us all a favor by forcing us out of our complacency and inertia. Change is good, even if not always welcome.

In summary, you guys are sucky capitalists and need to get with the program.
1/20/2019, 3:41 am Link to this post PM Spikosauropod
 
Extropia DaSilva Profile
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Registered: 12-2017
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Re: An Observation About LAR


Spiko is failing to make the distinction between ‘evolutionary’ or ‘progressive’ obsolesence and ‘planned’ obsolesence.

“Evolutionary’ obsolesence is a natural consequence of the Law of Accelerating Returns. At any point in time, our ability to produce goods is limited by the knowledge we have access to. But, because our knowledge base is expanding, our ability to produce changes over time. In other words, tommorrow we are able to make things which could not have been built with the knowledge of the past.

To give one example, if you built a computer as powerful as an iPhone with 80s hardware, its processing power and storage capacity would necessitate the use of a truck to carry around its component parts. It just could not be as powerful as an IPhone AND as portable. But, thanks to advances in our understanding, it eventually became possible to have both power AND portability.

If the sheer brilliance of a service or device means people gladly and willingly choose to purchase it, there is nothing wrong with this turn of events. It is key to building a better future. This is why I also call this kind of obsolescence ‘progressive’.

But this is quite different to ‘planned’ obsolesence. Whereas ‘progressive’ obsolesence tries to do the best that can be achieved, given what we know today, ‘planned’ obsolesence deliberalely sets out to make products that are inferior compared to what is technically possible. It has less to do with pursuading informed people to make the wise decision to upgrade their equipment and gain a qualitative improvement, and more to do with forcing them to make a repurchase by subjecting them to bullshit inferiority.

So, no, I am not looking at this the wrong way. You are.
1/20/2019, 7:50 am Link to this post PM Extropia DaSilva Blog
 
luciddream00 Profile
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Registered: 04-2018
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Re: An Observation About LAR


Incremental progress is great, and we see it every day. However, we will not get to mind uploading, AGI and programmable matter in the next 20-30 years with only incremental progress. We need to see truly disruptive tech if we want to see a singularity in our lifetime. The thing about disruptive advances in technology is that they're hard to see coming even if they seem obvious in hindsight.

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Account closed permanently. I won't stand for abuse of authority by forum administration to censor criticism of a conservative radio host that celebrated the death of AIDS patients on his show. Maybe some day we'll speak again elsewhere.
1/20/2019, 9:38 am Link to this post PM luciddream00 Blog
 
Gr33n Daem0n Profile
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Registered: 10-2018
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Re: An Observation About LAR


quote:

Extropia DaSilva wrote:

It is like somebody going to a car showroom and buying a whole new vehicle when all they really need do is buy replacement spark plugs.



Well, I think it'd be more like giving you a really shitty transmission, in hopes that you'd assume your car would seem clunky, slow and under-powered for the (somewhat) newly established highway system that everyone had been using.

This was just an issue I noticed and found annoying in hindsight with my mother's computer buying history, and how these components seemed tuned to have an unnecessarily limited shelf life. I figure, with the knowledge that lay people wouldn't know specifically what was wrong, and just assume the computer was out of date and slow.

*Video streaming had transitioned into being a big part of everyday computer usage imho, whereas gaming was still the domain of dedicated graphic cards, and buying off the shelf for that would have been mostly pointless. (unlike today)

People were relatively computer illiterate back then, and she's not alone (my sister and brother's wife too) in not knowing that the on-board video processor specifically was so under-powered. I simply speculate that they intentionally minimized integrated graphics at the time in most computers, to fit snugly within this predictable upward trend, as people had gotten faster dsl and cable internet speeds.

It wasn't meant as the best example of planned obsolescence that I could think of. It's just something I noticed and brought up that seems to fit on the spectrum afaik. (at least in that particular time frame of 4:3 240p and 360p, to 16:9 360p..480p)

They could strategically hide it all behind all kinds of rationalizations and side-steps if they really thought about it.

Last edited by Gr33n Daem0n, 1/20/2019, 3:34 pm


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#Not all...
1/20/2019, 10:18 am Link to this post PM Gr33n Daem0n Blog
 
Spikosauropod Profile
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Parliamentarian

Registered: 06-2007
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Re: An Observation About LAR


quote:

Spiko is failing to make the distinction between ‘evolutionary’ or ‘progressive’ obsolesence and ‘planned’ obsolesence.


I absolutely am not. I agree that it is unscientific to claim that nature "planned" for animals to grow old and die, but it is absolutely clear that hard limits on age have been selected for. Growing old and dying is hard-wired into our biology. Natural selection has designed animals to grow old and die. In other words, if living as long as possible was advantageous to a species, our biology would be such that we could easily live 1000 years. Planned obsolescence is "God's" plan, and industry has taken him up on it.


I'm terribly sorry to break it to you, but planned obsolescence is one of the best things that has ever been invented. Realistically, planned obsolescence includes everything from deliberately updated fashions to light bulbs that are designed to burn out after a year to screws on batteries that cannot be unscrewed to animals that grow old and die. You can try to be fancy and separate planned obsolescence into categories, but the reality is always the same. Both nature and industry force us to change on a regular basis and that forced change is universally beneficial.

Last edited by Spikosauropod, 1/20/2019, 3:34 pm
1/20/2019, 3:27 pm Link to this post PM Spikosauropod
 
luciddream00 Profile
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Registered: 04-2018
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Re: An Observation About LAR


Eh, planned obsolescence isn't really a thing in the way people imagine. It is less about purposely making products fail after some amount of time, and more about cutting costs by using materials and manufacturing methods that result in limited lifespans. Companies don't typically try to make their products last less time, they just determine a minimum acceptable lifetime and build around that. If Apple knows most consumers replace their phones every X years, then they don't bother trying to make batteries that last much longer than that.

---
Account closed permanently. I won't stand for abuse of authority by forum administration to censor criticism of a conservative radio host that celebrated the death of AIDS patients on his show. Maybe some day we'll speak again elsewhere.
1/20/2019, 3:52 pm Link to this post PM luciddream00 Blog
 
Spikosauropod Profile
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Parliamentarian

Registered: 06-2007
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Re: An Observation About LAR


As someone who generally defends capitalism, I wish it was true that planned obsolescence is not a real thing, but the evidence of the Phoebus Cartel is irrefutable.(1) I can't believe it has never been done again, even if with less formality.

______________________________________________________________________________________________
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
1/20/2019, 4:09 pm Link to this post PM Spikosauropod
 
luciddream00 Profile
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Registered: 04-2018
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Re: An Observation About LAR


True planned obsolescence does happen occasionally, but the vast majority of the time when people say "planned obsolescence" what they're really describing is just cost/benefit on the part of the manufacturers.

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Account closed permanently. I won't stand for abuse of authority by forum administration to censor criticism of a conservative radio host that celebrated the death of AIDS patients on his show. Maybe some day we'll speak again elsewhere.
1/20/2019, 4:18 pm Link to this post PM luciddream00 Blog
 
Extropia DaSilva Profile
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Registered: 12-2017
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Re: An Observation About LAR


I still say Spiko is failing to distinguish between obsolesence which is a natural and necessary part of any evolutionary process and the kind where products are deliberately designed to be suboptimal for no reason other than to force people to repurchase sooner than they would have. It’s like he believes no obsolesence would be bad (which I would agree with) and therefore we should not be critical of companies that set out to make inferior products and force their customers to make repurchases for reasons other than ‘this new product is qualitatively better than what I have, so I want to buy it’. This is just dumb.

Lucid did a better job of explaining how some design choices may not be a plot to extort money out of consumers, but rather decisions to do with cutting costs. But that does not explain why some printer manufacturers sneaked a chip into their machines that make the printer fake lack of ink, forcing consumers to replace cartridges that actually have quite a bit of life left in them (if you take that cartridge to a place that will ‘refill’ it for you, all they really do is just reset that chip and sell the same damn cartridge back to you!) Nor does it explain why Apple purposefully made it so damn hard to replace their batteries.

Only ‘market’ efficiency (focusing on making as many resales as possible) explains these kinds of tactics.
1/21/2019, 2:18 am Link to this post PM Extropia DaSilva Blog
 
luciddream00 Profile
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Registered: 04-2018
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Re: An Observation About LAR


quote:

Extropia DaSilva wrote:

But that does not explain why some printer manufacturers sneaked a chip into their machines that make the printer fake lack of ink, forcing consumers to replace cartridges that actually have quite a bit of life left in them (if you take that cartridge to a place that will ‘refill’ it for you, all they really do is just reset that chip and sell the same damn cartridge back to you!) Nor does it explain why Apple purposefully made it so damn hard to replace their batteries.




I'd guess in both cases it is probably a mixture of cost/benefit and some amount of planned obsolescence. Printer companies can probably use a chip that counts printed pages for a lot cheaper than a sensor that actually detects the amount of ink in the cartridge, but I doubt many consumers would prefer an inaccurate chip to simply printing a page and judging for themselves when it is running low or out of ink. Similarly, a non-removable battery means the phones can be smaller and lighter but I imagine most consumers would prefer a removable battery over a slightly smaller device.

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Account closed permanently. I won't stand for abuse of authority by forum administration to censor criticism of a conservative radio host that celebrated the death of AIDS patients on his show. Maybe some day we'll speak again elsewhere.
1/21/2019, 6:07 pm Link to this post PM luciddream00 Blog
 


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