Disposable Gadget Culture
What do you do after you spill coke all over your cell phone or drop it inside your toaster oven? According to an article in The Toronto Sun (a newspaper from Canada) not too many people are choosing to fix any gadgets that they are breaking. Instead they are opting to just buy a new one as it less fuss or muss.
Experts also say that many of the tech companies know this and they have planned obsolesce because it much more expedient and less expensive to buy he latest gadget rather than fix the new one. A good example is last year’s iPod. Although it was flawed because it was the first generation many people did not opt to take it in for repairs. Instead they just bought the new one. This is why this generation of consumers is being identified as part of the disposable gadget society.
However not everybody opts to throw out their gadgets. There has actually been a boom in the last few years of shops that cater to fixing phone and iPods. With any luck you can get up to 18 more months out of products like iPhones that are really only designed to last a year or two. There is a shop in Toronto, Ontario (in Canada) called Tech-Know Space which is a great example of hits type of fix-it shop. It specializes in upgrading, integrating and repairing digital technology.
The owner of this store, who talked to journalist Lorraine Anthony of the Canadian Press, says that a lot of the time the equipment can be saved and that quite often people are just a little too careless with the device.
The problem here is ethical. Is it really that green to buy from companies that design their stuff as junk? Should we buy from any company that is claiming to be very modern yet at the same time keeps putting out a new and improved product once a year?
It is also not necessarily to anyone’s benefit to dispose of a phone and buy a new one, especially if the contract on the phone is not expired.
Still it seems that people are so nuts for the newest technology or latest design that they will do anything to get their hands on the latest gadgetry. Another ethical question is that given how many the electronic parts and plastic parts in these kinds of gadgets can pollute the planet once they are thrown out — should we be ignoring the possibility of repairing them at all? Should the phone, for example, be a fashion accessory that simply goes in and out of style with no regard at all for how they are rapidly filling up our landfills?
According to the article the most fixable technology includes laptops, Blackberries and all phones. That means there is no excuse for not getting your broken gadgets fixed so you can save the landfills from filling up.
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