Unwanted Corkpull • Hacker News Board

Re: Unwanted Corkpull

#31

Post by gumby » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

beckman466 wrote: post #18

lqet wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the comment by Nagle, which indeed seems to include "everything you see" [0], is a bit too extreme. Is water future trash? A piece of rock? Also, how is "future" defined here? I don't think that a piece of gold will be considered "trash" even in 1,000 years. I think what he means is this: the added manufactured value of any object will degrade over time. [0] https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-robin-nag…

> I think the comment by Nagle, which indeed seems to include "everything you see" [0], is a bit too extreme. i think Pendergrast used the quote to highlight the capitalist dynamic that incentivizes the profit-seeking economy towards creating low-quality single-use industrially-produced products, due to the parasitic economic rents from intellectual property making proper products overly expensive. in other words: th…

Stripped of the class jargon, this could be more simply expressed as “planned obsolescence is the inspiration for the subscription model”

Re: Unwanted Corkpull

#32

Post by gumby » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

lqet wrote: post #6

gumby wrote: post #4

This is a really insightful essay. Although it isn’t part of the main thrust of the essay, this jumped out at me: > “Every single thing you see is future trash,” says Robin Nagle, anthropologist of material cultures and anthropologist-in-residence at the New York Department of Sanitation. This system that “not only generates so much trash, but relies upon the accelerating production of waste for its own perpetuation”…

I think the comment by Nagle, which indeed seems to include "everything you see" [0], is a bit too extreme. Is water future trash? A piece of rock? Also, how is "future" defined here? I don't think that a piece of gold will be considered "trash" even in 1,000 years. I think what he means is this: the added manufactured value of any object will degrade over time. [0] https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-robin-nag…

In the human environment water certainly is: after use, or after becoming runoff, it needs to be cleaned before being disposed of. And that rock in your backyard is unlikely to be reused in the next owners’ landscaping but rather scraped away with everything else and sent to the landfill.

I think the statement is sufficiently applicable that it’s easier to list what is a proportionately small number of exceptions rather than listing the things that match.

Even when we look up we need to clean the air.

Re: Unwanted Corkpull

#33

Post by beckman466 » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 10:39 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #31

beckman466 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the comment by Nagle, which indeed seems to include "everything you see" [0], is a bit too extreme. i think Pendergrast used the quote to highlight the capitalist dynamic that incentivizes the profit-seeking economy towards creating low-quality single-use industrially-produced products, due to the parasitic economic rents from intellectual property making proper products overly expensive. in other words: th…

Stripped of the class jargon, this could be more simply expressed as “planned obsolescence is the inspiration for the subscription model”

do you mean 'the subscription model' where giant profit-seeking firms retain full ownership of tech, and who can therefore jack up the price of 'service'/usage at any time?

yeah fuck that. i live in an apartment block where i pay €3 for every wash. that's a fucking ripoff.

the solution is modular open source hardware and software.

seriously, why are you so people to give up all their power?

we need to start thinking outside the boundaries of the capitalist profit-motive.

to see the devastating impacts of planned obsolescence (e.g. the disgusting amount of e-waste shipped to African countries) and then think we should give more power to corporations is a bit of a mindfuck to me.

> Stripped of the class jargon

easy to frame or dismiss something as jargon if you're benefitting from the status quo, eh?