Friday, August 26, 2016

"Choosing to Skip the Upgrade and Care for the Gadget You’ve Got"


"“That’s how I think about a lot of my tech stuff: candidates for 11th-hour pet rescue,” said Mr. Lai, adding that he was fired from the recycling facility in 2010 after continuing to take home unwanted gadgets, against the wishes of his boss. Now he works for the Fixers Collective, a social club in New York that repairs aging devices to extend their lives.

Many tech companies are trying to train people to constantly upgrade their gadgets — part ways with a device, the argument goes, as soon as something newer and faster comes along. Companies like Apple, AT&T and T-Mobile USA now offer early upgrade plans that allow consumers to buy a new cellphone every year. Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing, said at a product event last month that it was “really sad” that more than 600 million computers in use today are more than five years old.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/technology/personaltech/choosing-to-skipthe-upgrade-and-care-for-the-gadget-youve-got.html?contentCollection=weekendreads&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=c-column-middle-span-region&region=c-column-middle-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-middle-span-region&_r=0

So valid! Why we gotta upgrade so often? How long can we continue to pretend that these capitalist behaviors aren't ruining the planet? I mean, it's amazing economic engineering by the phone companies, but they need to stop.

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