Planned Obsolescence Considered Beneficial: Towards Digital Freedom of Movement

Last night, after brushing our teeth, my girlfriend Sarah and I noticed that the blue color that had been added to some of the bristles on our toothbrushes had faded. Apparently, this tells you that it is time to replace your brush head. Apart from the lack of blue color, however, our brushes looked perfectly fine — not like they needed to be replaced at all. Electronic toothbrushes are known to follow the razor and blades model of pricing, so we were wary: should we let the company who makes most of its money off of brush heads bully us into throwing away the ones that seemed ok to us and buy new ones? ​

My first personal experience of planned obsolescence happened in such an imposing manner that it has left its mark. In 2011 my parents’ Epson printer stopped working. There were two nervously flashing lights and a mysterious, vague error message saying that some part wasn’t functioning. My dad called the company’s support hotline ​, where he was told that while this was a fixable hardware dysfunction, replacing the part would cost about 120€ and that therefore fixing it wasn’t worth it and that he should just get a new printer.

This could have been the end of the story, had I not, by sheer coincidence, a few days later been watching TV and stumbled upon the movie “The Light Bulb Conspiracy” ​ This very movie single-handedly brought the topic of planned obsolescence into the public consciousness, at least in Europe. One of their examples? An Epson printer suddenly refuses to print, with two nervously flashing lights and a mysterious, vague error message. In the movie, they download a slightly dubious-looking piece of software that resets the printer’s internal page counter — and suddenly, the error disappears. Well, I had nothing to lose, my parents’ printer was considered junk already, so I went onto some weird Russian site and downloaded “sscserve.exe” ​. I connected the printer, pressed a button in the software, and just like that, everything went back to normal. The printer went on to print happily and was in use without incidents for another couple of years.

As exasperating as these stories are, the whole picture is usually more complicated. Epson, of course, is quick to argue that the seemingly arbitrary limit is there to protect consumers: a part of the product that is known to wear out after a certain time might (!) actually wear out and start to leak ink. There is a point to be made that this is ridiculously bad design — why construct a part that is expected to wear out rather quickly in a way that makes it basically impossible to replace it ​ and why not tell customers about this limit? Even when taking their excuse at face value Epson still looks bad.

In Defence of Tradeoffs §

However, their argument is not moot: There are often situations where designers have to balance out trade-offs against each other. Simply optimizing to make a product as long-lasting as possible may not always be in the customer’s best interest. Take, for example, the often-cited case of the life expectancy of light bulbs. It is arguably the most famous story of planned obsolescence, probably because the evidence seems so damning ​. It is well documented that in the mid-1920s the “Phoebus cartel”, a group of the largest light bulb manufacturers, came together and decided to artificially limit the lifespan of light bulbs to 1000 hours — even though 2500 hours were perfectly feasible. Infuriating! What is often left aside is that light bulbs’ production follows a pretty simple trilemma: Longer life expectancy, higher brightness, lower power consumption — you can only pick two! A certain level of brightness is non-negotiable, so is longevity really that much more important than efficient use of power? ​ It could even be argued that it is more attractive to over-optimize for longevity because it is much easier to advertise with it: a lifespan of 2500 hours is easier understood as a benefit than increased brightness per watt (compared to what?).

Similar arguments can be made about many of the product design decisions accused of being cases of planned obsolescence nowadays. Certain components do have a limited life span by definition, like batteries. In these cases, companies like Apple (and Apple in particular) are often scolded for brushing aside longevities little sibling, reparability. But it isn’t like reparability could suddenly be added without a cost. If devices are supposed to be ever thinner and lighter while at the same time becoming faster and longer-lasting (here, meaning the time until they need to be recharged), some tradeoffs have to be made. It comes down to a value decision. One can very well argue that reparability ought to be valued much higher — and I’d tend to agree! — but acting as if companies are simply making these decisions in spite is utterly reductionistic. It creates false expectations regarding the complexity of product design decisions and the incentives created by our current economic system. ​

Obsolescence in Digital Design §

Leaving aside your customers’ feelings, there is an obvious economic argument to be made in favor of shorter-lasting products. And if your customers are aware of it and know the “price” they pay for lower prices, what’s the harm? Well, the crucial argument is, of course, environmental. Even when leaving aside the amount of trash this line of thinking seems to approve of — imagine my parents’ perfectly fine Epson printer as a big hunk of useless plastic thrown into some dump — the environmental cost of producing goods is astronomical. Longevity and reparability of physical goods are most fundamentally not questions of saving consumers’ money. They are questions of saving our planet.

This (very strong) line of argument assumes high marginal costs. But what happens in an environment with extremely low marginal costs? Let’s turn our attention to the digital world.

In the digital world, the environmental argument carries little weight, and the moral argument only holds when customers are left in the dark. Without these, there is nothing inherently wrong with digital planned obsolescence. It is, in fact, used quite beneficially! For example, think about how many companies handle software pricing nowadays: as long as you pay a recurring fee, you get updates and can access new features. Once you stop, you can still use the version of the software that was the latest at that moment — you get to keep what you paid for! Simultaneously, it is clear that there are strong incentives to continue paying: You want to profit from the latest features, and older versions will eventually not be supported by newer operating systems anymore. The model only works because the software vendor can count on older versions of their software becoming obsolete, giving customers ample reason to pay them continuously. Simultaneously users are treated fairly, with all the conditions clearly laid out from the beginning. This model’s entire economic viability, which strikes me as very fair, is founded on planned obsolescence.

One may accuse me of ontological sloppiness here — is what I just described really “planned obsolescence”? Well, no, not in the way the term is technically used: The creators of the products did not specifically design a part of it to become outdated so that the product would be obsolete. But neither did it surprise anybody when that happened. The preliminarity of digital programs is not just a side-effect. It is, in fact, constitutive to the process of software creation: “[…] creating an algorithm unfolds in context through processes such as trial and error, play, collaboration, discussion and negotiation. They are ontogenetic in nature (always in a state of becoming), teased into being: edited, revised, deleted and restarted, shared with others, passing through multiple iterations stretched out over time and space. As a result, they are always somewhat uncertain, provisional and messy fragile accomplishments.”, writes Rob Kitchin ​. Understanding the term “planned” in a looser way, in the sense of “planned with”, I, therefore, am comfortable calling this planned obsolescence: it is predictable, expected and, most importantly, calculated with economically. ​

Obsolescence in the digital space comes with all the economic benefits that the proponents of planned obsolescence have promised: There is a constant drive to improve products and introduce new features — a great benefit to users! It ought to be noted, though, that because the provisionality is inherent to software, it is not something that the creators of software can choose. Especially since software is always built on top of other software, there is a Domino effect: Because the underlying systems will change, often to introduce new features, you are forced to invest time and effort into your software, even if just to keep it running. ​ This puts great pressure on the creators. But, circling back to the economic argument, users can also be expected to keep up their end of the bargain and continuously pay for the software’s maintenance. Planning with digital obsolescence creates a constant stream of income for creators and a constant stream of improvements for users.

Nonetheless, there still seems to be something off when arguing from a user’s perspective. Obsolescence of software, while not generally morally or environmentally harmful, still leaves a bad aftertaste. Just mentioning some of the many promising companies who got acquired only to have their product shut down, or straight out acqui-hired makes anyone who has used computers for any length of time go red with anger. I myself can relate very well to this feeling. Causing it is the simple fact that the investment users put into digital products is rarely only monetary: By using a product, users invest much of their data and, even more importantly, time to create and maintain this data in a specific way. ​ Product designers often discount this commitment because it is an investment foreign to any products but digital ones. The best comparison I can think of is this: Imagine having spent a great deal of time learning how to use a very specific tool, only to find out when it breaks after a short while that it is not in production anymore. The greater harm is not in the economic loss of having bought a product that broke but in the lost effort you invested in it.

When using a digital product, there is a credit of trust that users extend to the product — and disregarding it is not only disrespectful but unethical: As I have just shown, software creators profit financially from the cycle of obsolescence that is inherent to software creation. It, therefore, is their moral imperative to mitigate the side-effects of this cycle that users are negatively affected by.

Towards Digital Freedom of Movement §

Of Dieter Rams’ famous 10 Commandments for Good Design, two are often cited when talking of planned obsolescence: “Good design is long-lasting” and “Good design is environmental-friendly”. But expecting software to be long-lasting is futile and contradicts the very nature of software development. And, as I have argued, in the digital space, obsolescence and environmental friendliness aren’t strongly correlated ​.

What then would a corresponding commandment for good digital design look like? I suggest a digital equivalent to the idea of “Freedom of Movement”.

Freedom of movement […] is a human rights concept encompassing the right of individuals to travel from place to place within the territory of a country and to leave the country and return to it. The right includes not only visiting places but changing the place where the individual resides or works.

Wikipedia on Freedom of Movement

As a paying (sic!) user of a piece of software, I have paid my debt to the developers. When I subsequently invest my data and my time, this is not for the developers’ benefit and should not be used as collateral against me. Good digital products respect this: they let me take my data — in a format that is as likely to be understood by other tools as possible! — and leave, and maybe bring my data and return. Everything else amounts to extortion.

Good digital design gives users the freedom to take their data and leave.

A new commandment?