-Edwin Howard Armstrong taking David Sarnoff's attractive secretary in a ride in the "fastest car he could find" and then marrying her soon after, seems like an episode of Mad Men (85). But what is interesting is that Armstrong, after having his ego and reputation take a hit after he lost a patent and AT&T started calling some other guy the "father of regenerative circuitry", devoted almost all of his waking hours to solving the AM frequency radio static problem (85-86). He invented what was called a "limiter" and a "discriminator" which significantly decreased radio static and allowed for a stronger signal to carry further. In a demonstration, apparently audiences could hear and discern activities over the airwaves such as water being poured and paper crumpling (86-87).
-I for one, assumed that with the creation of FM radio, it wouldn't bring the whole FCC, RCA, and NBC to its knees. Like Armstrong, personally, I am all for technological growth and new developments, and care little about how the major corporations are going to make their money on new products that make their i.e. 1000% profit margins obsolete. So because of the potentially disastrous bottom line for RCA, and with their hopes being pinned on the TV destroying the radio, Sarnoff misrepresented the FM invention, fired the biggest proponent of the radio signal, Dr. Baker; and asked Armstrong to essentially clean out his lab and that he was replaced by the TV wonderboy and his lab (91).
-On a side note, obsolescence is a necessary part of the capitalist economy. Speaking to economics here: manufacturers make a product; people buy this product; the product is improved and now the manufacturer markets the new and improved product to the same people that just bought their old product. This is how our economy works, and this is how a free-market economy works. Without obsolescence due to new and better products, we would all have Soviet era type appliances and automobiles. That wouldn't be good at all.
-Another part of this obsolescence idea is that of automated assembly lines and faster, more efficient manufacturing practices that eliminate time and manpower. If the costs can be lowered, and manufacturing times lowered, this means that it is possible to still sell the same product for the old sale price and make more money per sale...or you can drop the price and sell more units. Either way, it is the obvious choice to make when owning a company that sells things like radios and TV's to the public. So when Motorola streamlined their making of the hand-held radios, these products could no longer be fixed, they simply had to be discarded and a new one would be bought, they helped facilitate the move towards the "death dating" part of planned obsolescence (113). In this case, the prices were likely dropped significantly because the product had a short or variable life expectancy. Either way, this was necessary to do so in order to keep customers coming back time and time again when their old radios would break.
-The Japanese were smart people; when their silk export business dried up in about 1931, they increased their hold over Manchuria, established a puppet ruler, expanded their drug trade considerably, and the icing on the cake here, they got their puppet ruler's wife addicted to drugs so they could control all of Manchuria (117). That was actually a very savvy and very effective way to maintain power and maintain money coming into Japan.
-So what did the U.S. do when Japan became even more aggressive in the seas and in China? That's right, we created nylon and seriously cut their importation of raw materials from the U.S (117). The U.S. chemical company DuPont finally made nylon stockings available on "N-Day" May 15, 1940 (125). On a personal note, I went to high school with two of the DuPont heirs, the older one was a few years ahead of me, I can't remember his name, but the younger one was a grade below me. His name was August DuPont V I believe. Either way, they had a lot of money. I'm not too sure if any of the family members have anything to do with the business side anymore, but I do know their father was on the board of Trustees and he was on the board of trustees at Pingry, which was my high school. The Pingry School's board of trustees reads like a Fortune 500 best companies conglomeration; I'm serious.
-But what is interesting about nylon and silk is that nylon would never, and in fact has never, taken over for silk, it has merely been an acceptable substitute. The contest between the two is not a story of "superior technological innovation replacing an inferior natural product. It is the story of a symbolic contest between two cultures fighting for economic dominance (128)". So although silk was not made obsolete, the silk war in this case created a status symbol for the real deal and a cheap substitute which everyone could enjoy in the case of nylon.
-Brooks Stevens said he coined "planned obsolescence" which isn't likely to be true, but for him, "planned obsolescence was simply psychological obsolescence, not product death-dating. It grew out of the 'desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary (153). This is actually very interesting because this is sort of how most Americans who aren't on the strictest of budgets live. Times now are tough, I get that, and I get that what we would collectively "splurge" for in 1999 most of us can now no longer afford now. However the idea that we can have something newer, better, and quicker has always been the idea that most Americans have as the idea behind research and development. I know that when a new toy comes out, be it childrens action figures or high def tv's, we're always looking at what our neighbors got and trying to one-up him. You got the 50' well I got the 55'; your kid just got the lego set with awesome shit that we didn't have growing up, my kid just got two of those lego sets. Its all about competition and ego in a market economy like ours that drives the new and better products. I'm getting a new car. I have an '03 with 94K miles on it. It works but its dying and before it goes kaput, I need a new one. If i didn't absolutely need a new one, i probably wouldn't be getting it, however I am, and since I am, I'm gonna ball out with a new 2011 model instead of a 2010 or even a 2009. Why? Well because since i'm spending the money anyway, lets go all out. Its a mentality that drives obsolescence almost as much as the products themselves. If that crazy super computer that China just came out with was available all of a sudden in a laptop size for say $200,000...I know a ton of people that would buy them immediately no matter how expensive it is. I know that's actually a very low figure but i was trying to pick a price significantly higher than any laptop we have now. So not only would the product itself make every other laptop immediately obsolete, it comes down to the consumer and whether or not he wants to make that purchase to own a crazy powerful, crazy cool, crazy expensive device. However because of the genuine obsolescence to existing computers as well as extensive physical inventories of laptops and laptop components, not a single company which exists today would come out with this lightning fast Chinese computer. It would practically put them out of business with how much capital and assets they have in their physical inventories and manufacturers of the components. It would need a new company, one that has no share in the existing market, to come out and compete dangerously with powerful tech companies. And because this won't happen, ever, we have to live our lives with he planned death of existing technologies and when new toys are made available. -On a paranoid stint here, I truly believe that most major tech, chemical, and defense corporations have already developed cures for cancer, aids, missiles that do crazy things, and computer chips the size of red blood cells that have double the computing power of existing processing chips. If it isn't these things its others which unfortunately, cannot be released to the public just yet due to the huge profit hits these corporations would take.
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