Made to Break, Part III

The last third of Slade's made to break extends the idea of obsolescence beyond the physical. By the 1960's, the terms was describing "people's knowledge, training, and skill sets." Cyberspace was the wave of the future. The advent of video games made such a huge impact on our society and culture, that one professor believed that in the future we will be living in a virtual reality. However, even video games themselves were not able to dodge being thrown out like most other things in our society.For instance, the game of pinball is "now a species close to extinction." (pg. 224) Game consoles have gotten superbly advanced over the years and the older arcade games, like pinball, have been left in the dust, only to be picked up by those with a nostalgic longing for the past.
More seriously, Slade described the the obsolescence of weaponization as an American strategy against the Soviets, during the Cold War Era. American Products were sabotaged before they were acquired by the Russians Ie. they were modified to work initirially as expected, but after "a few trust-winning months, it would salt its output with defective chips.." (p.254.)
Slade closed his book by describing the effect of cellphones' short life span and how they are the biggest contributor to e -waste.
I think that what's has happened is that with miniaturization, people are becoming more comfortable tossing their electronic goods out. This, in combination with people's non committal attitudes, provides the perfect storm for ridding themselves of undesirable electronics. Our next big step must be "planned disassembly" as Slade describes it in his last few words of the text; reuse as part of the product cycle. Since we use limited resources in creation and development of electronics, we have no choice but to recylce our e-waste.