Any computer or cellphone salesman will admit their products are made to last only barely a few years, yet we pay so much for them. Don't worry there will be something newer and cooler out sooner. It boggles the mind that we consume so much.
So I've gone through a dozen cellphones (half destroyed by moisture, half by dropping) and on to my third laptop. Built or rebuilt four desktop computers over the past decade and I had fun doing it. The laptop I had to give back after I was done journalism school sadly. The next one was an indestructible old Dell that I got off a friend for free if I replaced the heat-sink fan. No problem, only cost me $30 and lasted me a good six months before other problems and frustrations took it out. Will see how long the HP mini netbook lasts with fewer parts to go wrong.
Nobody's perfect at low product consumption, but why won't things last any more? How old is my car? Almost 10 years old, runs smoothly and on its third owner. My road bike? I figure it's almost as old as I am and I only had to replace the tires, brakes, cables and oil the chain. Found it in a bush and it was the right height. Same goes for my last bike which I sadly left behind in Victoria which I rode for seven years without owning a car.
Without a car I learned to make things last, fixing old stuff in a second-hand bike shop where the owner, Hans, was this old genius of salvaging old frames, parts and economic replacements. He probably kept half of Victorians riding as everyone knew his skills to restore a bike. Kids would come with their parents who knew a bike would just get out-grown so why pay $100s when Hans could find a bike for them $50.
A business-man and community leader, Hans is proof of Mr. Ford's dream of mass-produced engines, nuts and bolts lowering the cost of transportation --Mr. Shimano's bike gears inter-changeability extended it. Simply put, computer parts and most electronics are swappable, with only the outside wrappings and customer service differences. Unfortunately it's cheaper to get a new one than pay for tech time to the problems. It could be that most people are scared or too busy to look under the hood and poke around to fix things themselves. Things are a lot more complicated too so not their fault entirely.
My grandparents grew up fixing things in a time before this over-consumption paced world. Growing up around the wars, it was only trash after it couldn't be used a couple times over. Tin and iron last a lot longer than plastics and can be reworked and reused. There was no BestBuy or Canadian Tire to just grab a new part, the general store might have it in next summer after the snow was finished.
Linen,wool and canvas wear like iron and patch-work quilts and darned socks aren't a stylish thing to keep old ladies busy, it was a fact of life. I don't know many people my age who can sew to fix clothes, just by a new piece at Old Navy. I'm guilty of it too but try to make my clothes last or gasp go to consignment stores even.
Economy may be fueled by n consumerism, but every time I go to the museum, I'm blown away. Take for instance, a portrait photographer made his own gear out of an old film projector lens, a scrapped shutter and built his own bellows and darkroom eighty years ago. I've built a pin-hole camera in elementary school and a few darkrooms up from very little, but nothing that fancy or with such good results. I won't mention how many cameras I've gone through, but it's more than the cellphones and my non-digital ones outlast their 'replacement' non-film ones. My mom's Pentax point and shoot lasted 25 years and I though I can use my 25 year old lenses on it, I can't say the same for my three year old dSLR Pentax.
Without soap-box ranting, surrounded by advertisements of what and holiday excuse to buy buy buy, I wondering how long cheap stuff will last. Yes duct-tape will extend the life of a car, but hopefully we don't need to test it. Maybe this whole earth-day thinking where people are so hip with being able to reuse recycle and reduce won't go out of style. Carbon footprint is a rant-worthy subject in Alberta but that's okay. Hope we can learn from our grandparents' ingenuity anyways.
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