TechContrarian

It’s amazing how many choices we have for everything especially when it comes to technology. Everyone wants to make a buck so now we find ourselves with too many choices in consumer electronics, software and other easy to manufacture and distribute products. Of course a cell phone is not exactly easy to make however there are thousands of engineers across the globe who have all read the same books and had the same training and know 95% the same information. I know this is true in my industry. We come up with the engineering plans for the manufacture of a product and we have a company in Taiwan or china or some other similar South Asia Pacific country put its hard working labor force to the task.

Now, given that we are in another industrial revolution, we have all those small companies making low to medium quality products with built in obsolescence otherwise known as planned obsolescence. This means, we are forced to buy the same product after a given period of time because the product breaks. Companies tells us that we would have thrown out the product anyway and to keep prices lower they don’t manufacture their product with a high quality standard. Well, thanks people but I would like a choice in the matter. Some products that come to mind would be cell phones, personal digital assistants, laptop/desktop computers (post-1999 era), current model plasma screen tv’s.

I still have an Apple SE and I am in love with it, especially since it still works! It boots up in seven seconds, the hard drive is original and the screen works fine. If this is the case, then computer manufacturers and hard drive makers and all the rest of them can easily make quality products that work for more than the current expected 5 to 7 years. Try 20 to 30 years as a target.