Not a weak signal, but something which has been lurking in the shadows for a
long time, is already having impact but is still notoriously ignored.
The unsustainability of consumerism. This is not meant to be a critique on
capitalism, just an observation which can be distilled from the "Right to
repair" movement, crappier products and the unwillingness of the industry to
build durable products.
Let me give a few examples.
Almost all consumer-grade mobile phones are not only hard to
repair, but vendors make it deliberately hard for them to be repaired. In
certain edge cases they even use proprietary screws for which tools are
unobtainable. Planned obsolescence renders devices nonoperational after a while,
may it be to non-replaceable batteries, deliberate crappy engineering, refusing
to ship firmware upgrades after two years or even make the latest version of
the operating system so complex that it won't run on older models.
Household appliances include unnecessary electronics adding absolutely no
value except vanity and business opportunities to vendors. What about all of
the Iot-enabled washing machines, microwave ovens and what not? The added
complexity is adding more point of failures and when a vendor discontinues
their Internet endpoints the whole Iot-part becomes unusable. In the worst
case, the whole appliance will stop working.
In general, in pretty much all appliances the trend is "glue it together, make
it as hard as possible to dis- and reassemble.
All of this is leading to a massive generation of waste, pollution and
unnecessary consumption of energy. We are already drowning in waste, recycling
of certain components is still in it's infancy. Think of LiIo batteries,
broken touchscreens or PCBs ending up somewhere in countries with substandard
worker's- and environmental protection laws.
One may wonder, why. It's part of the overall scheme of consumerism;
corporations need to maintain or improve growth. That's not necessarily a bad
thing and always due to greed, but also due to inflation. If consumers are not
willing to go with inflation, the product must be produced cheaper or, the
nefarious way, self-destruct after it's planned lifetime.
Regulators shall take appropriate actions to incentivize vendors to build
durable products and offer support even beyond their mandatory warranty
period. If that can't be guaranteed or is not viable economically, vendors
shall take back broken devices to recycle them.
It can even be a selling point for vendors: Our products are more durable and
we make ourselves accountable & liable.
Vendors shall stop equipping devices with unnecessary vanity electronic and
even more so, force their devices to communicate with their dedicated
proprietary cloud services which may vanish anytime something realizes the
business case just went boom.
reverseallthethings t1_j7ajkn0 wrote
Reply to What weak signals or drivers of change—that receive limited attention today—are most likely to create signifiant impacts over the next 10-20 years? Where are the black swans hiding? by NewDiscourse
Not a weak signal, but something which has been lurking in the shadows for a long time, is already having impact but is still notoriously ignored.
The unsustainability of consumerism. This is not meant to be a critique on capitalism, just an observation which can be distilled from the "Right to repair" movement, crappier products and the unwillingness of the industry to build durable products.
Let me give a few examples.
Almost all consumer-grade mobile phones are not only hard to repair, but vendors make it deliberately hard for them to be repaired. In certain edge cases they even use proprietary screws for which tools are unobtainable. Planned obsolescence renders devices nonoperational after a while, may it be to non-replaceable batteries, deliberate crappy engineering, refusing to ship firmware upgrades after two years or even make the latest version of the operating system so complex that it won't run on older models.
Household appliances include unnecessary electronics adding absolutely no value except vanity and business opportunities to vendors. What about all of the Iot-enabled washing machines, microwave ovens and what not? The added complexity is adding more point of failures and when a vendor discontinues their Internet endpoints the whole Iot-part becomes unusable. In the worst case, the whole appliance will stop working.
In general, in pretty much all appliances the trend is "glue it together, make it as hard as possible to dis- and reassemble.
All of this is leading to a massive generation of waste, pollution and unnecessary consumption of energy. We are already drowning in waste, recycling of certain components is still in it's infancy. Think of LiIo batteries, broken touchscreens or PCBs ending up somewhere in countries with substandard worker's- and environmental protection laws.
One may wonder, why. It's part of the overall scheme of consumerism; corporations need to maintain or improve growth. That's not necessarily a bad thing and always due to greed, but also due to inflation. If consumers are not willing to go with inflation, the product must be produced cheaper or, the nefarious way, self-destruct after it's planned lifetime.
Regulators shall take appropriate actions to incentivize vendors to build durable products and offer support even beyond their mandatory warranty period. If that can't be guaranteed or is not viable economically, vendors shall take back broken devices to recycle them.
It can even be a selling point for vendors: Our products are more durable and we make ourselves accountable & liable.
Vendors shall stop equipping devices with unnecessary vanity electronic and even more so, force their devices to communicate with their dedicated proprietary cloud services which may vanish anytime something realizes the business case just went boom.