Grayling Blog

Planned Obsolescence applied to communications

Posted on 30.11.2011 by Isabel Bermejo

I must admit that my perception of the world changed completely when I saw the excellent documentary in Spanish Television: “The Light Bulb Conspiracy - The untold story of Planned Obsolescence”, by Cosima Dannoritzer, acknowledged as Best Documentary by the Television Academy and winner of the “Ondas International TV Award 2011”.

This documentary reveals that, regardless of the important technological advances that have taken place throughout the years, consumer products last increasingly less, as they are produced or manufactured with a limited lifespan, which is programmed in advance. This system, sustained by the hyper-consumerism that characterizes the welfare state, certainly benefits world economies and the free market, but does not favour our planet’s sustainable growth.

According to this documentary, this whole process of limiting the consumer products’ lifespan in advance started with the production of a very simple, everyday-use item, present in the majority of our homes: the light bulb. In year 1911, light bulbs used to last for more than 2,500 hours, but nine years later the sector’ s companies entered into an agreement to reduce their lifespan to just 1,000 hours, in order to be able to sell more units in the international market. In fact, at that time there was a light bulb prototype which could last up to 100,000 hours, and which, quite literally, never saw the light.

Since then, and due to the heyday of mass manufacturing, consumer products turn obsolete too frequently, encouraging consumerism, and as many intellectuals say: “consumption consumes us”. We live in a dynamic, changing world, where everyone is expected to have an active, motivating and innovative attitude. Certainly, without underrating the multiple advantages that this has for the development and evolution of our current system. The vital thing is to know how to channel it without turning it into a double-edged sword.

In a context where we have accepted the concept of perishability as part of our normality, I have already started to get used to, for example, having to charge the battery of my new Smartphone every night, when my previous mobile phone, which was not 3G, lasted more than a week. Or buying a new toaster each time it breaks down, because they always tell me that it is cheaper than fixing it.

With this frame of mind, I started asking myself whether I could apply that planned obsolescence term to any field of the journalistic activity, considering the diversity involved. To my surprise, I realized that one of the market’s products with a more limited expiry date is, precisely, the traditional newspaper, which comes to existence to be consumed instantly, soon after it comes out to the street, and turns old within hours or, even, minutes, as the new information technologies offer continuous interaction to the ordinary citizen. In view of the antiquity of newspaper journalism, we would have been well ahead of Thomas Alva Edison’s invention.

But we can go much further. More than a few voices bet on an early death of the conventional media as a means of broadcasting information. In a few years we have gone from Journalist 1.0 to 2.0. From 2.0 to 3.0. And some already forecast a bright future for all the “point zeros” that are yet to come. As Internet’s expansion gave way to the surge of the new informative bubble, a great deal was argued on how digital journalism would sweep away the paper era with one stroke. The new professional profiles born parallel to this development, encompassed in terms like Community Manager, Social Media Planner or Online Branding Director, seemed to be attaining more prestige than the traditional communicator or informer.

Although the survival of paper will continue to be at stake, especially due to an economic issue, we cannot forget that the media are, above all, companies. I believe that it would be more accurate to speak of coexistence, instead of extinction of a fundamental part of the history of journalism which, at this point, I doubt will happen. The key must be professional recycling, learning how to adapt to the new ways of communication without forgetting the origins of all journalistic activity.

This was what Philip Bennett, ex-editor in chief of the Washington Post and one of the great gurus of Anglo-Saxon journalism, stated at the time: “The future of journalism is yet to be discovered. We are at a stage of deep experimentation. Basically, the challenge is not in adapting newspaper journalism to a digital format, but rather to find new ways of providing information and data, and telling stories. Being of the generation formed by traditional newspapers, I believe that it is essential for all emergent technologies to preserve those values for which many of us have fought”.