Programmed obsolescence is yet an intrinsic characteristic of our market. Practically all the products you can find and buy are affected by this idea. For better or worse, the things you purchase, especially technological ones, are designed in such a way that they only last a determined period of time, then, they start to work badly or get damaged because they were created like this.
It has been years since the producers started to use this strategy in order to have a regular number of consumers, because some products, like light bulbs or cars, could be used during years and there was no need to replace them, their lifetime was very long. An incredible example is the Livermore firemen’s lightbulb, which has been on since 1901, practically without stopping: https://www.centennialbulb.org/
Clearly a nowadays bulb is not able to do that, they are produced so that their life expectancy is around 2000 hours. So, they started to make less durable products, and people had to change them more frequently. This may result annoying, because you know they could make the best product they were able to, but they make one with a timer, that you have to replace more than it is necessary. They are selling us perfect defective products, and we have no other option, because all businesses do it. But, are we really that subject to them? Or is there also a subjective part?
Effectively, there is more; like a marketing technique, companies and states induce us to think that products last for a time and then you have to replace them, on the one hand because it is true, but on the other sometimes there is no need to do it, but our perception is that they have to be changed for new ones. It is called perceived obsolescence. When what makes us change the product is not that it stops working but we think that it is old and it has to be replaced by a new one. Simply by the fact that the new includes some technological gadgets, you are tired of it or the society considers it an old model, so you have to acquire the new one.
And we have to be careful about this, because sometimes we are not aware of the reasons why we change things, and maybe it was unnecessary. A common case are our mobile phones. It is obvious that as they are recent invents they change a lot in few time, so you cannot have a mobile phone fabricated ten years ago. However, I think that until the device dies, there’s no need to change it, and most of people do it. Why? Because having an old mobile is rejected by the society, and often people do not realise that they only want to change it because the kind of mobile you have determines the person who you are.
And this happens with lots of other products, also because we are used to change them and we do not like to wait until it stops to change it. Anyway, just think that fixing and making things last is always better, resources in the Earth are not infinite and it is not ecological to get rid of things when you can continue using them. And it is cheaper.
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