So, how did I get to that? Well, the last few days I’ve been looking at new phones, I can’t really afford a new one, especially because most contracts around here are 24 months long and the way my life is, who knows where I’m gonna be in 24 months. I still wanted to know what’s around in case my battered Sony-Ericsson died. And since I refuse to get an iPhone, and the reason why is not the point now, I was looking at all sort of other phones. Then, this morning I woke up quite early and wanted to listen to some music, so I thought I would use my iPod (the one I found and never use) and it was out of battery, then it wouldn’t switch on… so while I was resetting it, because it froze, and trying to get the damn thing charged I remembered a documentary my sister told me about a few months ago about planned obsolescence.
It sounds kind of obscene, but it’s not. The documentary talked about how in this consumer society nothing is built to last. And that’s not because all these electronics are delicate or anything like that, but because if things lasted we wouldn’t buy new ones, so the factories wouldn’t need to produce so much, so the big companies wouldn’t make so much profit, etc. The documentary is easy to find in youtube if you search “obsolescencia programada”, however, it’s in Spanish and I have no idea if it’s available in any other language. I found it very interesting, although quite unsettling. I suppose that’s the purpose of it, a way to report that economic growth doesn’t mean all is well.
