Made to Break (p83-p185)

I finished the 2nd reading section for Slade's Made to Break and I'm convinced it's a book worthy of my eyes. I was kind of thrown off when I read the chapter on radios at first, but Slade's message became clearer towards the end of the 2nd section. I remember reading about all the info from the radio chapter b/c I read about David Sarnoff and RCA in a media studies class awhile ago. "The 1950s marriage of transistors and printed circuits rendered the postwar generation of consumer electronics obsolete, because it made them, for all intents and purposes, unrepairable." (p.105) That sentence is what kept his argument relevant to me for that particular chapter at least. Radios, aimed to sell to teens were being shipped, to the States in different colors and styles making them appear disposable seeing as how teens are one of the largest groups of consumers in the US. The death dating phrase on p. 113 added a new outlook to the phrase planned obsolescence. The fact that products are designed by scientists to purposely not last long is kind of f-dup if you're a consumer.
I understand why he is talking so far in the past, but to me, some of it is unnecessary. The strong usage of the past just reminds of the saying, you won't know where you're going, if you don't know where you came from which is why he must be relying on the past so much. I can respect it, but I would honestly not want to read all of it. Chapter 5, The War and Postwar Progress, made the reading assignment more interesting compared to the last chapter. Chapter 6 introduces the 1960s history of obsolescence and also counterculture. A lot of ways of life changed in the 60s but the speed at which technology evolved got faster. I enjoyed on how Slade explained a change in advertisement as well through obsolescence. "...psychological obsolescence through their VW ads..." (p. 179). I agree with how obsolescence became a trend and has further manipulated how Americans live their lives. The only problem I have so far with in this book is that I feel like I'm getting waterboarded with historical references. Other than that I like it.

Made to Break (1-81)

Giles Slade's Made to Break starts out talking about the economic values of manufacturing goods. Slade talks about the "disposable culture" or "the throwaway ethic"  (p. 13) when introducing disposable products for men and the idea of cheap materials being used to make things like paper shirt fronts. The King of all razorblades, Gillette, was one of the examples Slade used for discussing disposable items for men. I drew a conclusion from the title of the book and after reading the first few chapters that it's about consumerism in America and the idea of disposable technology. By disposable technology, I mean the idea that with the rapid technological advancements in society, and within the short range of time that these advancements are created in, society will tend to replace good, still working technology with newer innovations. I believe this is true because of conforming to the evolved consumer culture that the majority of US citizens participate in.

"But as the disposable trend continued, it became culturally permissible to throw away objects that could not simply and conveniently be consumed by flames." (p. 24) This quote supports the argument that if the item isn't disposable like paper plates or cups, than the tendency would be to simply throw whatever it may be away as society adapts to a disposable consumer culture.

The book carries on like some of the other books we read like Computers by Swedin and Ferro in that it's structured in a timeline. This makes sense because in order to analyze the present, we must see how we got to this point through a scope looking back at the past. In Made to Break's case, it's through the economic tendencies of our society starting from the 19th century when disposable products took over.

I enjoyed chapter 2 where Slade discussed Ford and GM and how each company came up by Henry Ford for Ford and Alfred Sloan for GM. He basically based the chapter on the idea of obsolescence out of the competition between the two car companies. Obsolescence is basically Slade repeating the idea of something disposable but reinforced by car manufacturers. The car in the 1920s was a huge technological advancement and is just grazing the technology of computers and the effect they have. But as you read on, you can tell that his argument is cohesive and easily structured for the reader to understand what he's getting at.

The third chapter starts talking about the Great Depression, but I feel the grip of the book's argument will be in between the 2nd and 3rd sections of the book. I have to read more to see if my guesses about where he's leading his argument are correct.

Peace.

Technopoly

This book was great and I've shared similar thoughts with the ideas Neil Postman presents on the effects of technology on the United States population as discussed in his book, Technopoly The Surrender of Culture to Technology. I feel that people have access to great inventions like computer and smartphones, but the uses they serve could lower human logic and thought.

Earlier in the book (on p. 64), Postman gives one definition of a Technopoly as having an "information immune system" that "is inoperable. "There's less thought used to solve real life problems with new gizmos and gadgets that do all the work for us. The only thing that seems to be required of us is to give the devices our full attention. A small example of technology taking over our minds is when people start using their phones for other reasons besides actually talking to someone. Regardless of what they are doing, some form of technology is taking away their attention so that if they were driving while doing this(..and let's be honesty, there are a lot of people like me guilty of this) making them hazards and dangerous to themselves and everyone else on the road.

 I loved the way Postman opened up the chapter 10 with a hypothetical California chardonnay TV commercial starring Jesus (p. 164). He goes to the extreme to say society is on a course to downgrading so much that biblical figures will run Madison Ave and try to sell us things some rappers talk about. Moore's law was discussed in the first book, Computers by Swedin and Ferro, and directly relates to the discussion of technology. The exponential increase in technological advancement has to be lowering something on another graph important to human health, whether it be mental or physical.

To say technology is pure evil is going to an extreme since it has a great influence on medicine and ways to live healthier. Of course when the boundaries to search/upload/download content of almost ANYTHING is endless. It's a little scary thinking about what someone could be using technology.

Computers: The Book

it's been a long time, i shouldn't have left you without a dope post to read through?...sorry

I finally got my Swedin/Ferro Computers book and it was a nice factual layout of computers past and present. While Neil Armstrong was moonwalking aimlessly in '69, ARPANET gives birth to the marvelous internet.

It was still a bit too dry for my tastes. As the introduction says, it "provides an accessible historical overview of this ever-changing technopoly..." (ix), so I knew to expect before I started the first chapter.

I would have to say the format of book is a reflection of Moore's Law, whereas it starts off primitive and then gets exponentially more interesting towards the 2nd half of it as technology improves faster and faster.

"Intel saw the advantages of the personal computer market and continued to push the microprocessor along the path of Moore's Law." (p. 102). This explains my point how it took almost 2/3 of the book to speak on the more modern technology that we relate to today. It's not that the book isn't interesting but more towards the point that for a book that came out in 2005, it seems a bit outdated. If you take a step back from the wealth of information and knowledge the book overfeeds you, computers are just a byproduct of Moore's Law. Technology and the constant need to improve it will not likely stop until all the over-exaggerated movies about the end of the world actually start to make sense if we still have enough of our attention spans to care.

Overall, I thought, while the book was a little dry, it got me to think outside the structure it presented itself in. Although it was inevitable, I was glad the authors acknowledged Moore's Law. The book has a point which is made through this idea of rapid technological change. Computers may be obsolete within a few years which I  believe was one of the major themes and I couldn't agree more.