豆知识 2011-04-24&04-30 物品的故事（4/5）

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Planned obsolescence is another word for designed for the dump. It means they actually make stuff to be useless as quickly as possible so we'll chuck it and buy a new one. It's oblivious² with things like plastic bags and coffee cups, but now it's even big stuff, mops, DVDs, cameras, barbecues even, everything, even computers. Have you noticed that when you buy a computer now, the technology is changing so fast that in just a couple of years, it's actually an impediment to communication? I was curious about this so I opened up a big desktop³ computer to see what was inside. And I found out that the piece changes each year is just a tiny little piece in the corner. But you can't just change that one piece because each new version is a different shape. So you gotta chuck the whole thing and buy a new one. So I was reading industrial design journals from the 1950s when planned obsolescence was really catching⁴ on. These designers are so open about it. They actually discuss how fast can they make stuff break that still leaves the consumer having enough faith in the product to go out and buy another one. It was so intentional⁵.

But stuff cannot break fast enough to keep this arrow afloat, so there's also perceived obsolescence. Now perceived obsolescence convinces us to throw away stuff that is still perfectly⁶ useful. How do they do that? Well they change the way the stuff looks. So if you bought your stuff a couple of years ago, everyone can tell that you haven't contributed to this arrow recently. And since the way we demonstrate our value is contributing to this arrow, it can be embarrassing. Like I've had the same fat, white computer monitor on my desk for five years. My co-worker just got a new computer. She has a flat, shiny, sleek⁷ monitor. It matches her computer, matches her phone, even her pen stand. She looks like she is driving in spaceship central, and I, I look like I have a washing machine on my desk.

Fashion is another prime example of this. Have you ever wondered why women's shoe heels go from fat one year to skinny the next to fat to skinny? It's not because there's some debate about which heel structures is the most healthy for women's feet. It's because wearing fat heels in a skinny heel year shows everybody that you haven't contributed to that arrow recently, so you are not as valuable as that person in a skinny heels next to you, or more likely in some ad. It's to keep us buying new shoes.

Advertisements and media in general play a big role in this. Each of us in the US is targeted with over 3000 advertisements today. We see more advertisements in one year than people 50 years ago saw in a lifetime. And if you think about it, what's the point of an ad except to make us unhappy with what we have? So 3000 times a today, we're told that our hairs are wrong, our skins are wrong, our clothes are wrong, our furniture are wrong, our cars are wrong, we are wrong. But it can all be made right if we just go shopping. Media also helps by hiding all of this and all of this. So the only part of the materials economy we see is the shopping. The extraction, production, and disposal all happen outside of our field of vision.

So in the US, we have more stuff than ever before. But polls show that our national happiness is actually declining. Our national happiness peaked in the 1950s, the same time as this consumption mania⁸ exploded. Hmm. Interesting coincidence. I think I know why. We have more stuff, but we have less time for the things that really make us happy. Friends, family, leisure time. We're working harder than ever. Some analysts⁹ say we have less leisure time than any time since feudal¹⁰ society. And you know what the two main activities are that we do with the scant¹¹ leisure time we have? Watch TV and shop.

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