I've had this pair of earphones for about two years. I used to think that everything about them spoke of quality. That's why I bought them. I had to replace my old Apple headphones which got crushed when, one day, my Mom closed the glove compartment on them. These shiny ones had a lot going for them - they were built of machined aluminum, instead of plastic. They looked great and sounded great. They were stylish. The cord seemed a little less sturdy, but I figured that if the earpieces were so solid, then the cord must have been designed and manufactured to a similar standard.
So I was unpleasantly surprised when I found, one afternoon, that the plastic around the cable had opened up at the jack end, exposing the inner wiring. I devised a way to wrap hot-glue around the damaged area, as if applying a cast to a broken leg. This fix worked quite well (although it didn't look terribly attractive, as you can see from the photo). I was happy to save the cord before it flaked out.
Not long afterward, however, the two parts of aluminum in one of the earpiece separated. Not being one to give up easily, I carefully glued the parts back together, and they stayed together for a time. My earphones were still outputting music perfectly, but my perception of their build quality was waning. Finally, about three weeks ago, sound became intermittent in the left earpiece (you can see where the cord is bent and weak). I could only listen with them if I sat perfectly still. Any movement at all would cause the sound to cut out. This rendered the headphones practically unusable.
Although I did yank the cord a couple of times, I took very good care of these things - I always wrapped them up and stowed them safely in a little pouch when they needed to go into my backpack. Portable products like these should be designed and made to take a beating. Most importantly, they should be able to last for longer than two years. People seem to accept the fact that any electronic device they buy now will be useless in just a few years. In fact, we assume this to be true, and take it for granted. It's easy to get brainwashed into needing "the next best thing," but what frustrated me about my poor headphones was that they didn't even need to be replaced! They were still perfectly in style, and they sounded just as good as any comparable earphones currently on the market.
This whole ordeal shouldn't have come as a surprise to me. I should have known that this is just the way products are made today. I should have gone back to the store and bought another pair. Why bother getting the current pair fixed? The warranty was up, and it would be cheaper (and faster) to simply buy a new pair than get the old ones repaired. But here is a symptom of a much larger problem: planned obsolescence - a methodology that's been in use since near the dawn of Industrial Design.
Products we buy today aren't designed to last for very long. This is because corporations have figured out that they can make more money by forcing people to buy new stuff on a regular, rapid basis. Annie Leonard, a prominent scholar and supporter of sustainability, tells us that less than one percent of all the stuff we buy is still in use just six months after consumption (Leonard). According to that statistic, it's a wonder my headphones lasted so long! But in all sincerity, a major part of why this figure is so dismal is because of planned obsolescence - if corporations can keep people buying, then the economy can stay healthy, and even grow (and the corporations can make a lot of money). So they design their products to break long before they really should, so that people are forced to go buy new products to replace the old ones. This is precisely what seems to have happened with my headphones.
Planned obsolescence was developed shortly after World War I, when mass production began to blossom. Originally, consumers had reason to be angry if something they bought was made cheaply - if it broke before they expected, they would have to wait for a long time to get it fixed, or pay a high price to get it replaced. With mass production, however, it became easier, and much less costly to replace a broken product. Here is where corporations found the opportunity to take advantage of consumers. They knew that it had become easier, in some cases, to replace instead of fix. So they strove to make replacing the norm in all cases. They did this using planned obsolescence. But they also used another related method.
Leonard discusses perceived obsolescence. This is an effect of style and fashion. Things that break truly do have need of being fixed or replaced, but through the criteria of fashion, something may 'need' to be tossed even if it is perfectly useful. It simply has to look outdated, and people are willing and ready to leave it in the dust for the new model, whose only difference is cosmetic. It's arguable that aspects of the Functionalist movement operate at this level - although the products may have been advertised as working more efficiently, or being more "functional," all that really changed in the end was their appearance and aesthetic.
Our lives are increasingly revolving around consuming, especially with the ever-accelerating rate of technology advancement. Consumer electronics are the prime example of planned obsolescence. They aren't built with the future in mind - they have very few expandable or upgradeable components. So when new software is developed that doesn't work on certain hardware, the entire computer has to be thrown away.
What's so scary to me about this industrial design practice is just how clever it actually is. It seems counter-intuitive that people would accept purchasing things that break after such a short period of use. But it's a testament to our collective attention span, and our sensitivity to brainwashing. It's easy to forget how long we've owned a cheaply made product when we are bombarded with advertisements presenting newer, better, more stylish versions of that product. Advertisements are designed to distract us, and push us out of touch with what really matters. Just as our relationships with animals have become ever more distant (as I've discussed here), our attachments to, and perceived values of the products we own have become vastly distorted. We need to start caring about what we buy, and how long our stuff lasts. Just pay attention to what Annie has to say in the video below - it's one of the most important, relevant, and informative short films I've seen in a long time.
References:
Leonard, Annie. "The Story of Stuff." http://storyofstuff.com/
Slade, Giles. "Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America." Published by Harvard University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=YMoxdac6J-cC&printsec=copyright&dq=planned+obsolescence
related post by a fellow ID blogger:
"Slow Design" by Kevin Quale
No comments:
Post a Comment