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wrote:
"The story of poorly made objects is well known: it started in the USA in the 1920s with General Motors, to encourage the buying of more cars, more often, and was originally intended as a way to increase production (and jobs) by deliberate manipulation of the design of a product, in order for it to break sooner. This system is called ‘planned obsolescence’ (although the original name, as coined by the man who invented it, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr, was ‘dynamic obsolescence’), and it has now spread to almost everything we buy – things are not made to last, and there are increasing legal or logistical loopholes that actively prevent us from independently repairing the stuff we buy once it breaks, as anyone in possession of a faulty iPhone or leaking washing machine knows only too well. You can’t just call the person down the road to mend your broken object, because it wasn’t designed to be disassembled: only approved technicians will do.
The monopolizing, forceful and non-inclusive nature of this business model, which is directly responsible for our current cheap mass production and resulting crisis of hyper-consumerism, denies decent work to local communities. Repairing, crafts and making are no longer seen as dignified, viable professions, which in turn decreases our capability for manual skills, because we are no longer teaching such skills in schools. The loss of skills and abilities that we have honed for millennia isn’t just a sad cultural loss, it has also other implications, as does any loss to the overall ecosystem. Many of the manual skills required to be a surgeon – precision, a steady hand, needlework, accurate cutting, grafting – are not dissimilar to what is needed for domestic crafts – precision, a steady hand, needlework, cutting, folding. We are jeopardizing more than simply the demise of crochet doilies and dodgy woodwork if we continue to nurture future generations that are manually capable of doing little more than scrolling down your feed.
- loved clothes last
"The story of poorly made objects is well known: it started in the USA in the 1920s with General Motors, to encourage the buying of more cars, more often, and was originally intended as a way to increase production (and jobs) by deliberate manipulation of the design of a product, in order for it to break sooner. This system is called ‘planned obsolescence’ (although the original name, as coined by the man who invented it, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr, was ‘dynamic obsolescence’), and it has now spread to almost everything we buy – things are not made to last, and there are increasing legal or logistical loopholes that actively prevent us from independently repairing the stuff we buy once it breaks, as anyone in possession of a faulty iPhone or leaking washing machine knows only too well. You can’t just call the person down the road to mend your broken object, because it wasn’t designed to be disassembled: only approved technicians will do.
The monopolizing, forceful and non-inclusive nature of this business model, which is directly responsible for our current cheap mass production and resulting crisis of hyper-consumerism, denies decent work to local communities. Repairing, crafts and making are no longer seen as dignified, viable professions, which in turn decreases our capability for manual skills, because we are no longer teaching such skills in schools. The loss of skills and abilities that we have honed for millennia isn’t just a sad cultural loss, it has also other implications, as does any loss to the overall ecosystem. Many of the manual skills required to be a surgeon – precision, a steady hand, needlework, accurate cutting, grafting – are not dissimilar to what is needed for domestic crafts – precision, a steady hand, needlework, cutting, folding. We are jeopardizing more than simply the demise of crochet doilies and dodgy woodwork if we continue to nurture future generations that are manually capable of doing little more than scrolling down your feed.
- loved clothes last
20
I cant read today but I can see marx
