There is drawer in my house that is a graveyard. Adapters, gadgets, phones, music players, digital cameras - all once proud icons of the state of the art, now just a kind of art of the static. I know a Japanese blogger who inscribes in marker pen the date he buys a new toy so that he knows for how long he has had it. That strikes me as macabre. I don't want to be reminded of the half life of contemporary treasure. But still, it raises an interesting question. Should we despair at obsolescence or rejoice in the cult of the new?
Obsolescence is an inevitable consequence of capitalism. Think long enough about the logic of mass production and you will start believing in the divine necessity of building things designed to be thrown away. If we become wealthy through work, and work is created through things being made - then making something too well reduces the necessity of its continual replacement. You might remember the satirical scenario in Huxley's 'Brave New World' where the citizens of a perversely happy Utopia vie to entertain themselves in games and activities that use the maximum amount of resources. There is no doubt that waste creates wealth, but what does it do for happiness?
Well, it's hard to say - for the simple reason that the reason we buy things now has little do with replacement and everything to do with desire. Few people buy a new product because their old one is broken. They buy because objects and their ownership offer passports to worlds of pure symbolic joy.
Take Apple for example. Have you ever heard of a company where people hang on press releases like the Second Coming, turn up to product briefings as though they are spiritual rallies and immediately seize upon the latest version of whatever perfectly good gadget they previously owned to embrace the new, new thing? And it's not just technology. In Hong Kong, there is an entire black market trade in last season's luxury goods. For those that must have the latest look handbag - the handbag itself is worthless - it's the newness that counts. Cantonese fashionistas and rich wives trade in their precious commodities often months after purchase - to be snapped up by the lower rungs of mainland factory girls with their eyes on the prize.
There is an empty satisfaction in all of this. Continuous acquisition creates a kind of personal momentum that one can easily mistake for meaning. But to be honest, looking at my technology graveyard - i only feel remorse. When I think about the things that really make me happy - my old mechanical cameras, my fountain pen, my leather worn diaries, my beat up old leather satchel - it is their longevity that I prize. At some point in my owning them, they seem to have lost whatever brand signal they once possessed. Now they just radiate my own personal signature. I love that. It's like they stopped becoming mine and started becoming me.
And as to my own personal obsolescence, well - I'll guess I'll just have to get back to you on that one.
