Tek-Bull

Planned Obsolescence – The Reason Our Technology Breaks

The documentary from the video above goes into all the different stages that a company goes through when they are developing a new product. You have three stages that are required for a successful Consumerism – Advertisement, Planned Obsolescence, and Credit. The three stages make a modern business thrive, without one of the stages; the business fails and loses all types of power in a worldwide market.

We all know about the importance of having a good advertisement campaign, this campaign makes people believe they need a specific product. But most importantly, it makes people believe your product or brand is better than the competition.

We also know how important it is to have credit available to purchase the product’s that are being advertised, companies offer people the ability to pay in credit so you can purchase that one product you’ve been dying to have, but can’t really afford it.

Unlike Advertisement or Credit, not everyone knows about the effect “planned obsolescence” plays, and really it’s because not everyone talks about such a stage. In order to understand what planned obsolescence means, you have to understand where it all started. Obsolescence is the state of being which an object, service, or practice is no longer wanted, even though it may still be in good working order. Planned Obsolescence is the “time” that a company believes is the perfect timing for a product to go out. For example, we can make light bulbs that can be on for years at a time, but companies planned them to extinguish at the 1000 hour mark.

The reason planned obsolescence is important in our economy is because if a company developed a light bulb that never extinguishes, then they would effectively run themselves out of business, this same belief goes out with every other kind of product. iPods, are a perfect example, once the battery is dead (18 months or so) you were forced to buy a new iPod. By now you get the gist of this “conspiracy” but watching the video I listed above you can actually see that unlike other conspiracies, this one actually makes sense.