“It’s difficult to pinpoint an exact start date, but the declining lifespan trend seems to have gathered pace continuously. It varies in terms of the make, brand and robustness, but as an estimate I would say the lifespan has gone down by 20 to 30 per cent over the last two decades.”
The smarter and more digital things become, the shorter their lives. These devices are only smart from a planned obsolescence perspective. Digital is turning everything to waste. Progress?
I sound old saying this, but I think current models are less fix-able. less repair-able. as in, less able to be repaired by people who run repair shops in the community, or just work from their garage or whatever.
So, my parents have had the same washer and dryer for decades. and refrigerator. and oven. and if anything comes up, they have their repair person. he's a guy they know, and can fix literally anything made before 2013. it works for them! I envy them.
@gerrymcgovern Besides obsolescence and degradation over time, I think the original quality matters here too. What I mean:
My parents have a laundry machine that's a few years old. It works like crap. In the washer the laundry gets stuck wrapped around the center and gets the machine off balance. It frequently stops the wash mid -cycle (to avoid damage) and so my parents have to continuously be checking on it while it's running to make sure their laundry is in fact getting washed. Annoying AF..
@gerrymcgovern My parents are cheap/frugal and didn't feel like they can justify buying a brand new washer when the one they have technically works fine. But I'm sure in 1-2 more years they'll replace it out of frustration, even though it's not technically "broken", once they feel it's finally old enough they won't feel like it's wasteful to replace it. But they'll still be buying a new machine years sooner than they normally would.
My point is it's not just machines that break that get...
@gerrymcgovern replaced sooner, it's also machines that just had shitty quality/major design flaws from the beginning and people just live with it until they get frustrated enough to replace it sooner than they would've.
Perhaps a distinction without a difference, but I feel like it adds another dimension to the conversation. People hate new appliances right out of the gate, not just when they break.
@gerrymcgovern we know it’s capitalism, not digitization, because “they” told us a couple of years ago when Instant Pot went bankrupt because their product lasted too long (10 years). Built to last WAS a purchase point for consumers, now consumers don’t matter, investors do, & they want sales, not quality.
@DEDGirl@gerrymcgovern I have to think part of it is that increasing the complexity of devices increases the difficulty of design and maintenance, and generally makes a thing more vulnerable to entropy. There are more ways for a thing to fail. There are reasons why simplicity is supposed to be a virtue in engineering.
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