4 ms·

You forgot the make it smart/app based/subscription model!!

• nosianu 5y ago
  The scary thing is they can only do that because it sells. Plenty of people like the "new". I think much of that movement is the opposite of sustainability. Software-based products will have even shorter lifetimes. Even if some cloud service is not needed and it works with "only" a local app on your phone, the phones change quickly and even the OS. Even with backwards compatibility, ten years of lifetime already is ambitious. Devices used to have decades of lifetime. Electronics shortened it, computing elements more so, and now software. The cycles got shorter. The construction also got more and more flimsy. All the devices I got from my grandparents are still usable (cooking, mechanical calculator, photo, film), the more modern it is the less metal and the more cheap plastics that does not age well. If we had an efficient recycling system, and renewable energy to power the entire cycle it would be doable albeit still wasteful. But we have neither. The cycle is mostly fueled with fossil fuels, adding more and more carbon from deep below ground, and containing the energy of the ancient sun, to the surface carbon cycle. It is not circular, the end products end up dumped somewhere.
• sillyquiet 5y ago
  Yeah, and I also forgot the 'let's make sure the thing is an unrepairable black box, so make sure all manuals, part numbers, and diagrams are locked behind copyright, let's sue anybody on You-tube showing people how to modify or repair the thing, and let's be sure to add features and fixes only to Thing 2.0 Thing-as-a-service'
  • egberts1 5y ago
    John Deere would be turning over in his grave … over his tractors.