Planned obsolescence is not really a new concept. God used it with people.
Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence.
Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity.
In an age of multiple and massive innovations, obsolescence becomes the major obsession.
Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence, and anyone who can read without moving his lips should know it by now.
Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.
Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence...we make good products, we induce people to buy them, and then the next year we deliberately introduce something that will make these products old-fashioned, out of date, obsolete.
Publishers, naturally, loathe used books and have developed strategies to depress the secondhand market. They bring out new, even more expensive editions of popular textbooks every three to four years, in a classic cycle of planned obsolescence.
But planned obsolescence is possible only if the rate of technological change is contained.
Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you'd collapse. And while you people are overconsuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.
Rant said that view of time was set up so folks won't live forever. It's the planned obsolescence we've all agreed to...'Nothing says you have to swallow this,' Rant told me. 'You can always just die.
Planned obsolescence is another word for progress.
The more subtle thing is more speculative. The world is well past its long-term carrying capacity for human beings living a European, much less an American, lifestyle predicated on planned obsolescence. International economic growth is largely a matter of accelerated movement of materials from mines and forests to the dump. Instead of saving and buying decent furniture we can pass on to our children, we charge our credit cards for shaped heaps of sawdust and glue that fall apart in less than three or four years.
Like Godard, Tati is also remarkably appreciative of the odd beauty that can be revealed in the shapes, patterns and colors created by the technology of planned obsolescence.
Only one rational path is open to us - simultaneous de-development of the [overdeveloped countries] and semi-development of the underdeveloped countries (UDCs), in order to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between. By de-development we mean lower per-capita energy consumption, fewer gadgets, and the abolition of planned obsolescence.
or simply:
