Made to Break Part II

In Slade's middle chapters of Made to Break, he discusses certain products that had planned obsolescence installed into them, focusing on the radio. David Sarnoff, a higher up in the RCA, had an AM empire in the early 1900's, when along came Edwin Armstrong who invented FM radio. This invention actually came out of Sarnoff's request to clear static from AM radio. However, the FM radio was not compatible with AM settings, so Sarnoff saw this as a threat to his AM empire. What followed, was a series of lawsuits and bitter feelings, that eventually led to Armstrong's suicide. "Advance capitalism had regularly stifled or swallowed up the individual entrepreneur during those years when the political will to enforce legislation against monopolistic practices was the exception rather than the rule" (pg.97) Even though Saranoff was clearly at an advantage, being part of the RCA, a corporate behemoth, FM radio began getting more and more popular making AM radio somewhat obsolete.
           During this time, TV sets were also making a splash, but the nature of the invention was that they were constantly improving, making older sets obsolete. By the 1950's, "product life spans were no longer left to chance but were created by plan." (pg 113) Electronics were made so that they were generally irreparable if broken, increasing profits for corporations because it forced consumers to go out and buy new ones.
   World War II and the postwar period brought synthetic replacement of silk with the chemical invention nylon, and an intense demand for them was established by 1940.
    Slade continues, with discussing obsolescence in other part of life such as the housing industry. The invention of cheap, affordable housing with self-amortizing mortgages, were built with all nonessentials completely eliminated. Things such as basements become obsolete. Planned obsoloscence continued well into the 50's and 60's and psychological obsolescence had become the norm.
         It is somewhat difficult to deduct what Slade's argument is in this part of the book. It seems like he presents the reader with a sort of time line, that represents America's history and progession of planned obsolescence. This cut across many industries and all types of products. As was seen in Swedin's/Ferro's Computers, the computer is probably a prime example of a type of technology that just constantly kept getting improved because of new demands by the government and businesses. Slade states that the differential analyzer becoming obsolote is really the story of the rise of modern computing. No longer were computations being done mechanically, they were now being performed with energy pulses.
    I think that even if planned obsolescence was never planned, constant upgrades in technological products force the consumer to go out and by the new and improved version, because nobody wants to be left behind. On the other hand, it is important to distinguish between products that are made to break, such as the disposable razor that require the buyer to get another batch of razors, and general re-innovation of a product that deems its precedents as obsolete.  The latter being much harder to forecast. In my opinion, what Slade is attempting to do is lump those two things together, to give an exaggerated picture of the concerns that obsolescence may bring.