豆知识 2011-09-25&10-01 电子设备的故事 (1/3)
时间：2012-04-19 05:55:07
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（单词翻译）
The other day, I couldn’t find my computer charger. My computer is my lifeline to my work, my friends, my music! So I looked everywhere, even in that drawer where this lives. I know you have one too, a tangle1 of old chargers, the sad remains2 of electronics past. How did they end up with so many of these things? It’s not like I’m always after the latest gadget3. My old devices broke or became so obsolete4 I couldn’t use them anymore. And not one of these old chargers fits my computer. Urgh! This isn’t just bad luck. It’s bad design. I call it “designed for the dump”.
“Designed for the dump” sounds crazy, right? But when you’re trying to sell lots of stuff, it makes perfect sense. It’s a key strategy of the companies that make our electronics. In fact, it’s a key part of our whole unsustainable materials economy. “Designed for the dump” means making stuff to be thrown away quickly. Today’s electronics are hard to upgrade, easy to break and
impractical5 to repair. My DVD player broke and I took it to a shop to have it
fixed6. The repair guy wanted 50 dollars just to look at it. A new one at target cost 39
bucks7.
In the 1960s, Gordon Moore, the giant brain and
semiconductor8 pioneer, predicted that electronics designers could double processor speed every 18 months. So far, he’s been right. This is called Moore’s Law. But somehow the bosses of these genius designers got it all twisted up. They seemed to think that Moore’s Law means every 18 months we have to throw out our old electronics and buy more. Problem is, the 18 months that we use these things are just a blip in their entire lifecycle. And that’s where these dump designers aren’t just causing a pain in our wallets. They’re causing a globe toxicant
emergence10. You see, electronics start where most stuff starts, in mines and factories. Many of our
gadgets11 are made from a thousand different materials, shipped from around the world to assembly plants. There, workers turn them into products, using loads of
toxic9 chemicals, like PVC, mercury,
solvents12 and flame retardants. Today, this usually happens in far-off places that are hard to monitor. But it used to happen in my home, in
Silicon13 Valley, which thanks to the electronic industry is one of the most poisoned communities in the U.S.
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