

Heirloom Technology - irollboozers
http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2012/12/heirloom-technology/

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SeanDav
As I see it, many of the technologies mentioned in the article are still very
much in a frantic phase of development. The technologies are far from mature
but once the technology reaches a maturing level, most of the problems will go
away. Once your phone has better than eye resolution, battery power to last a
full day without charging, sufficient computer power to run any realistic
phone app, then attention will turn far more to durability and quality, at
least that is my hope.

There are at least a couple of excellent science fiction short stories (whose
names escape me now) that address this very issue of the disposable society
and quite frankly the downside is quite frightening.

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hayksaakian
It could also turn into a price war at that point.

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tdoggette
More likely is that it'll do both-- there'll be cheap Chinese smartphones that
compete feature-for-feature with much higher-quality products, some of which
might be heirloom quality.

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carlob
I really gave much thought at the way we spend money on gadgets until a friend
of mine told me he wanted to buy an iPhone 5 for his girlfriend as a birthday
present. And then it dawned on me that an iPhone 5 (without a contract) costs
as much as some really nice jewelry that this her granddaughter will probably
inherit.

It's not even about conspicuous consumption versus a more frugal lifestyle,
it's about spending 800$ on something that is going to be tossed away or
broken in 24 months.

~~~
bigiain
FWIW, and iPhone does hae somewhat more "utility" than jewelry. Sure, it's
partly a "shiny thing", bit it's a shiny _useful_ thing. (Whether its utility
is worth the ~$400/year it costs if you break/lose one every two years is a
good question.)

~~~
carlob
Yes, but this person already owns a fully functional Android phone that costed
about 200$. It is not as shiny, but it does more or less everything the iPhone
does (at least in term of usefulness).

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konstruktor
In the context of this article, I want to recommend Design For The Real World
by Victor Papanek. Many of the ideas mentioned here have been made popular by
Papanek decades ago.

