Planned obsolescence isn’t even in my top 10. The worst things about Big Tech are existential, like its use for mass espionage and murder by evil regimes.
Planned obsolescence helps those things too, creating many more targets to support for open projects aiming for compatibility with proprietary hardware, or proprietary formats, or even proprietary software (for Wine), or de-facto proprietary Web.
planned obsolescence wastes precious resources and massively contributes to climate change and our enslavement through consumption. its absolutely in my top 10
The biggest existential threat is still ecological destruction. Old growth forest are raised to the ground, the ocean is warming and acidifying as it absorbs CO2, and it’s all to make computers and toasters that don’t even last a decade.
It’s connected. When there’s no planned obsolescence, one can stop buying electronics until companies or some specific company regains reason. When there is planned obsolescence, you can’t easily start ignoring the vendor, usually. Your device quickly becomes both dangerous and kinda useless without support.
This requires sort of an Ulysses’ pact from companies. Sun would do such things. Sun would also develop fundamentally important technologies for literally every level of the industry. Unfortunately Sun went down.
And the way many companies went down in late 90s and 00s, I can’t blame others for trying to find some way to exist without such unfortunate events. One can’t rely on Ulysses’ pacts anyway. Those work to a limited extent when supported by other mechanisms.
It’s really a case of philosophy being required to find the solution. Not conflicting interests, to which (even in theory, with dialectics on one side’s extreme and fascism on another’s) both left and right movements reduce reality.
Said philosophy is that property rights are intended to share either finite resources or unique resources, and information is not a finite resource, however it is a unique resource.
The “conflicting interests” point of view means that everything unique should be a property and this is how things are done well, that means that everything has an owner who feeds from it, and a crowd of angry apes who think that fighting IP and copyright is evil theft making hardworking people hungry.
The “philosophy” point of view means that only finite resources should have owners, because ownership is a way for those who need a resource to have it, nothing more. Ownership and markets are a distribution mechanism, where those applying more energy to get a resource get more of it. It’s superficial for things which are not finite, and superficial means “bad”.
However work to develop new things and creation are finite resources. But those can actually be commodified. Trade secrets are the way it was called for all of history.
Patents allow rapid modernization and scale, which is an advantage over trade secrets, but patents can be issued for practical time periods, instead of practically indefinite, as it is now.
But I think for a decade or so the Western world can exist without patents at all, before reintroducing them in that improved form. It’s not hard to notice that in the current global economy IP and patents are one of the most powerful assets of the West, so it may seem a leap of faith. But it has to be done. Patents in such a situation are derived from human work, so the “designing” countries won’t lose strength compared to the “manufacturing” countries. The power is not in the patents. It’s roughly similar to the way decolonization in the XX century counterintuitively revitalized old empires when and where done softly and hurt them when and where done harshly.
This has almost nothing to do with privacy and misses the point behind planned obsolescence. The goal behind both are the same: maximize recurring revenue. The goal behind patents is different: obstruct competition. Fixing one has almost no impact on the others.
patents can be issued for practical time periods, instead of practically indefinite, as it is now.
Patents aren’t “practically indefinite,” they’re 20 years (15 for design patents). I don’t think that’s egregious, but I do think it’s a little too long, especially since there’s no requirement to actually produce the thing.
My preference is 5 years, with renewal if they can prove they’re building the thing and need more time, or have built the thing but need an extension to recoup R&D (i.e. renew from date of release). If they’re not building the thing or intentionally delaying, renewal should be denied.
That doesn’t help planned obsolescence or privacy at all, because neither is particularly related to patents.
The goal behind both are the same: maximize recurring revenue. The goal behind patents is different: obstruct competition. Fixing one has almost no impact on the others.
Obstructing competition has impact on every agreed policy, first. Second, it obviously has direct impact in maximizing revenue.
but I do think it’s a little too long, especially since there’s no requirement to actually produce the thing.
20 years ago some people in developing countries still used DOS.
My preference is 5 years, with renewal if they can prove they’re building the thing and need more time, or have built the thing but need an extension to recoup R&D (i.e. renew from date of release). If they’re not building the thing or intentionally delaying, renewal should be denied.
My preference would be just 5 years with no conditionals. Simpler things are harder to abuse.
That doesn’t help planned obsolescence or privacy at all, because neither is particularly related to patents.
That’s stupid, sorry. Like saying tanks are not related to air force. They are components of the same system.
Unless your planning on running your own infra for everything… I would argue planned obsolescence is a much greater and immediate threat.
Research is never long term. Imagine if the last 20yrs had been invested in increased ram and battery storage. Instead we have had a 20 halt on innovation in the residential side. Why big Phone wanted to stick with 4gb phone. And then 8gb so much so the reason they stopped was because it was becoming more expensive to make 8gb chips.
Unless you only pay cash, dont use Amazon to ship, google to research, Microsoft to compute… You are being tracked, the only difference now is the focus of the companies were for greed.
Planned obsolescence isn’t even in my top 10. The worst things about Big Tech are existential, like its use for mass espionage and murder by evil regimes.
Planned obsolescence helps those things too, creating many more targets to support for open projects aiming for compatibility with proprietary hardware, or proprietary formats, or even proprietary software (for Wine), or de-facto proprietary Web.
planned obsolescence wastes precious resources and massively contributes to climate change and our enslavement through consumption. its absolutely in my top 10
The biggest existential threat is still ecological destruction. Old growth forest are raised to the ground, the ocean is warming and acidifying as it absorbs CO2, and it’s all to make computers and toasters that don’t even last a decade.
Exactly. Planned obsolesce is an annoyance to my pocketbook. Violations of my privacy can completely screw me over for life.
We should absolutely solve both, but if I had to pick one, I’d go for privacy every time.
It’s connected. When there’s no planned obsolescence, one can stop buying electronics until companies or some specific company regains reason. When there is planned obsolescence, you can’t easily start ignoring the vendor, usually. Your device quickly becomes both dangerous and kinda useless without support.
This requires sort of an Ulysses’ pact from companies. Sun would do such things. Sun would also develop fundamentally important technologies for literally every level of the industry. Unfortunately Sun went down.
And the way many companies went down in late 90s and 00s, I can’t blame others for trying to find some way to exist without such unfortunate events. One can’t rely on Ulysses’ pacts anyway. Those work to a limited extent when supported by other mechanisms.
It’s really a case of philosophy being required to find the solution. Not conflicting interests, to which (even in theory, with dialectics on one side’s extreme and fascism on another’s) both left and right movements reduce reality.
Said philosophy is that property rights are intended to share either finite resources or unique resources, and information is not a finite resource, however it is a unique resource.
The “conflicting interests” point of view means that everything unique should be a property and this is how things are done well, that means that everything has an owner who feeds from it, and a crowd of angry apes who think that fighting IP and copyright is evil theft making hardworking people hungry.
The “philosophy” point of view means that only finite resources should have owners, because ownership is a way for those who need a resource to have it, nothing more. Ownership and markets are a distribution mechanism, where those applying more energy to get a resource get more of it. It’s superficial for things which are not finite, and superficial means “bad”.
However work to develop new things and creation are finite resources. But those can actually be commodified. Trade secrets are the way it was called for all of history.
Patents allow rapid modernization and scale, which is an advantage over trade secrets, but patents can be issued for practical time periods, instead of practically indefinite, as it is now.
But I think for a decade or so the Western world can exist without patents at all, before reintroducing them in that improved form. It’s not hard to notice that in the current global economy IP and patents are one of the most powerful assets of the West, so it may seem a leap of faith. But it has to be done. Patents in such a situation are derived from human work, so the “designing” countries won’t lose strength compared to the “manufacturing” countries. The power is not in the patents. It’s roughly similar to the way decolonization in the XX century counterintuitively revitalized old empires when and where done softly and hurt them when and where done harshly.
This has almost nothing to do with privacy and misses the point behind planned obsolescence. The goal behind both are the same: maximize recurring revenue. The goal behind patents is different: obstruct competition. Fixing one has almost no impact on the others.
Patents aren’t “practically indefinite,” they’re 20 years (15 for design patents). I don’t think that’s egregious, but I do think it’s a little too long, especially since there’s no requirement to actually produce the thing.
My preference is 5 years, with renewal if they can prove they’re building the thing and need more time, or have built the thing but need an extension to recoup R&D (i.e. renew from date of release). If they’re not building the thing or intentionally delaying, renewal should be denied.
That doesn’t help planned obsolescence or privacy at all, because neither is particularly related to patents.
Obstructing competition has impact on every agreed policy, first. Second, it obviously has direct impact in maximizing revenue.
20 years ago some people in developing countries still used DOS.
My preference would be just 5 years with no conditionals. Simpler things are harder to abuse.
That’s stupid, sorry. Like saying tanks are not related to air force. They are components of the same system.
Planned obsolescence is a symptom of something which is, or aught to be, in your top 10 issues with big tech.
Unless your planning on running your own infra for everything… I would argue planned obsolescence is a much greater and immediate threat.
Research is never long term. Imagine if the last 20yrs had been invested in increased ram and battery storage. Instead we have had a 20 halt on innovation in the residential side. Why big Phone wanted to stick with 4gb phone. And then 8gb so much so the reason they stopped was because it was becoming more expensive to make 8gb chips.
Unless you only pay cash, dont use Amazon to ship, google to research, Microsoft to compute… You are being tracked, the only difference now is the focus of the companies were for greed.