Technology leads us to disconnect

 Mobile Phone Cleaner MODERN technology is getting worse. The other night I watched TheFrench Connection on a video I borrowed from the Coburg library. The film itself was made in 1971 and this video tape was made in1999. It came in a grubby case that was falling to bits. Naturally when I put the tape into my VCR - which was also made in1999 - there was no picture, just a blizzard of static. So I gotout the VCR head cleaner, used it a couple of times, and we were inbusiness. We watched the whole film without a hitch, and even the sound wasgood. The point of my story is this. Who seriously believes that theircurrent DVD player will be able to play a nine-year-old DVD in2017? Way back in 2000 - a year after my VCR was made and that tape ofThe French Connection was printed - I bought my first mobile phone. I only got it because I had just moved house and the phone wasn'tconnected. In the next five years I probably made 50 calls on itand I never even learned how to text. Then, a couple of years ago, it stopped working. Recharging didn'thelp. I called Telstra and was told, as if I should have known,that of course it no longer worked: it was six years old. It wasn't damaged in any way, and it most certainly wasn't worn outthrough overuse. It was simply old. Since when has six been old? I spend much of my day watching planes flying in to land. Iespecially like the jumbos with their impossibly large bodies. Manyof these planes are 30 years old. Thirty! What if they just packed it in when they were six? Without warningor reason, and after making hardly any flights? Part of our problem is that our economic system values productionbut not endurance. It's great for the economy if we throw out stuffevery couple of years and replace it with new stuff. That's good.That's economic growth. If everything we bought actually lasted the way the 747 has lasted,well, that would be terrible! What would anyone buy? What wouldanyone make? It's high time that we started to ask some hardquestions of the economic geniuses who run our world. I am not richer because my phone stopped working after six yearsand I had to buy a new one. I am poorer. And the world is poorer, too, because the time and energy andmaterials that went into making that little phone are gone. Even if the world was not troubled by little things like globalwarming, it would be still scandalous that we tolerate built-inobsolescence. I have lost count of the number of toasters I've been through inthe past 10 years. I suppose that, on average, they last two years. A toaster! It's a little box with an element in it. An aeroplanethat flies at 900km/h and carries 500 people can last 30 years andtravel a hundred million kilometres, but a toaster is doing well toturn two. It's a disgrace. In the digital age, we have become so blinded by the necessity tobe up to date and upgraded and improved that we have lost sight ofwhat technology is for and who it is meant to serve. We weaklyaccept standards of service and workmanship that our grandparentswould never have stood for. A phone that simply dies after a few years? You can buy beautifulblack bakelite telephones in antique shops that are 60 years oldand more, and they still work! They cost about the same as a cheap mobile phone. Brendan O'Reilly is a Melbourne writer Share this article What is this?