“the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
~Terry Pratchett
We’ve all heard stories of how the fridges built in the 1970’s are famously still running today, while appliances bought today typically don’t even last five years (or, more precisely, last as long as the warranty and not a day longer).
From our fickle fast fashion through to the service-hungry cars we drive, and the laptops we have to keep upgrading to keep up with the latest cable standards; built-in obsolescence, like it or not, is a smart if cynical sales and marketing strategy we have had little choice but to accept these days as marketers race to maximise (as is their legal right) profit rather than performance and longevity.
More recently, the latest iteration of built in obsolescence, billed “abandonware” refers to software rather than hardware with an innate time limit, or as Faeeza Khan of Flux Trends puts it “abandonware is a product, typically software, which has been jettisoned by its owner and manufacturer, and for which no official support is available”. Abandonware, as such, reminds us that in our “Everything As A Service” world, we do not really own the products we have purchased, we only own their bodies, not their brains.
Think of the poor little smart vacuum cleaners that practically became a part of the family before their software stopped receiving updates from the mothership company and their frail plastic bodies became lifeless shells, fit for nothing but the landfill… Or of the toothbrushes, and sneakers (yes, these are real examples) that you cannot use once the software gets out of date.
Now however, built-in-obsolescence is coming for you, not just your wallet and your bank balance, but you. Your body, and even your mind.
A few examples of abandonware, present and future, hit a bit close to home and should give us pause for thought about the sort of future we are embracing in the name of reduced cost and increased convenience, and how we are being asked to become tenants rather than owners of our own brains and bodies. Klim airbag vests for motorbike riders is one of my favourites in the genre. The airbag is designed not to inflate (that is, it is designed, if not exactly to kill you, definitely to stand by allow you to die) if you fail to make a subscription payment. Lovely – right?
Or how about Second Sight, the bionic eye company that stoped software support for its Argus II prosthetic eyes, rendering its former clients literally blind after it “pivoted” to making brain implants (which are presumable more profitable) instead. Now just think about that. How willing are you to trust a company that is perfectly content with leaving its customers blind with a brain chip you may need to depend on for motor skills, movement, or memory?
Neuralink anyone? Can you trust any tech company not to essentially hold you hostage in your own body to their latest upgrades? (Talk about consumer lock in – once you have their chip in your brain, what price increase would you, could you, refuse to pay to continue staying alive and compis mentis?)
As we become more dependant on technology as literal and physical prosthetics for our brains and bodies; best we remember that renters are not owners, and that we have very, very few rights over the terms and conditions of the software “our” devices, businesses and bodies require to keep running.
This first appeared in Brainstorm magazine.