The story of stuff

[figment]

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

A simple and effective (and interactive) movie with an important message.

Comments

[sarendipatree.livejournal.com]

Is that amazing or what?! So well made. So pointed.

[jgs42.livejournal.com]

Interesting and well-produced, though the "simple" part of "simple and effective" is always a bit perilous -- to pack her point into a 20 minute cartoon she has to simplify so brutally that she strays into near-B.S. territory (well, for sure in her comment about computers which is the only one of her topics I know enough about to say for sure).

Overall worth the 20 minutes to watch it though -- thanks for posting.

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

It's true; any "quick survey" kind of thing has that danger. What was BS about the computer bit? Or what's the reality?

[jgs42.livejournal.com]

As I recall she says of computers something like "I opened one up and the only thing that's really new is this little part here, but you can't replace it because the new one is shaped differently". She brandishes two chippy things, one is kind of square and the other is kind of shaped like Texas. Presumably she's referring to CPU chips. The clear implication is that the shape of the chip was sneakily changed just to prevent you from upgrading the computer, which otherwise would be easy.

There are many things wrong with that critique. First, it's frequently the case that even if you could simply unplug the CPU and plug in a new one, it wouldn't be reasonable to do so, for example because the new CPU runs at a faster clock rate and needs faster memory that can keep up. So you need new memory too, and maybe more of it. And the faster memory needs a faster bus in order to communicate with the CPU. So that's more parts to replace. And maybe the bus got wider too in order to allow more data to be transferred in parallel, leading to more pins on the CPU chip... and those new pins might really be why the CPU chip's physical form factor changed, probably not because of planned obsolescence. In fact, I'd say that computers are legitimately changing fast enough due to pure technological pressure that there's no need for planned obsolescence, it just kind of happens that way. To the extent that I agree with her critique, it's that you maybe could try to design computers to be more piecewise upgradeable (more on that below). And some (many) are designed the opposite way too -- the Mac Mini on R's desk, and the MacBook on mine, both can't really be upgraded by a civilian, not even to add disk space (or in the case of the Mini, memory). Does this mean Apple is conspiring to add to the waste stream? I'd say no, that rather, we wanted to buy in the one case a very compact and quiet unit and in order to build it, they had to cram bitty little parts together in a way that's very hard for Joe Sixpack (me) to take apart and put back together. In the other case I wanted a laptop, and the same principles apply. Actually the same thing has happened with cars -- they used to be massively unreliable but you could at least get at the engine and understand what was going on when you opened the hood. Now the manufacturers fit twice as much stuff in half the space in the engine compartment, and while the cars are way more reliable they also defy the casual home mechanic. I don't really want to trade back, though.

As for what a normal person can do in this situation, IMO it's (a) choose to use a computer and operating system which can be expected to have a long useful life, and (b) when you do upgrade your computer, immediately hand down or sell the old one while there's still someone who might be able to use it. The latter point is somewhat unique to computers -- to get back to cars again, it's not like you wouldn't be able to even give away for free a well-maintained, reliable 15 year old car. But try it with a computer.

Getting back to computers, if you want to blame anyone at all, I would point my finger first at operating system and software companies (cough Microsoft cough). Is there any sane reason why I need a gigabyte of memory to open the letter that I wrote 20 years ago on a machine with 128 kBytes of memory? That example is only the tip of the iceberg of course. To some extent, software upgrades are the planned obsolescence engine driving the computer upgrade treadmill she complains of. But even in that case, not all software upgrades are gratuitous. I certainly don't want to go back to using Mac OS 7, and I bet you don't either. Sometimes "progress" is more than a cynical advertising slogan.

I seem to have overrun the LJ posting limit of 4300 characters, remainder in the next post...

[jgs42.livejournal.com]

Here's the rest:

Anyway, to bring it back to her 5-second comment that started this tirade, the point is that I don't think the lack of CPU chip upgradeability is any more an industry conspiracy than, say, lack of ability to swap out the seats and engine of your car. I do think though that if we had an economic system that accounted for costs differently, industry would be motivated to make computers (cars, etc) much less disposable. They'd cost more too, and maybe be less capable, but that might be OK with us because the world would suck less. But until and unless that happens, everyone (you, me, big companies) will continue to do what makes sense in the current framework.

Well that more than I meant to write, I hope it was a little bit coherent.

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

I am edjamacated now! (Yes, it was fairly coherent; thanks!)