Great post. And I love the idea of colonizing our attention.
I also think about it as the “extraction economy.” The dominance of tech and PE turns our lives into a series of extraction points - huge college loans, exorbitant home prices, medical - all of which make us laborers regardless of level.
The more I learn about PE the worse it gets. They really see anything and everything as an extraction point. Mobile home parks are one I learned about recently, just nightmarish stories of jacking up the rent for people without other options. Unfortunately the "extraction economy" seems spot on to me.
Yup. I live in a mobile home park. Besides raising rent, they tend to create ridiculous rules that they can then fine you for breaking. Last year they arbitrarily decided we needed to repaint the floor of our deck, and only gave us 10 days to do it. We're old. We have neither the ability to do it ourselves, nor the money to pay someone to do it on short notice. So we got fined. We still haven't painted, so will probably get fined again the next time they wander by to look.
Email me at michelleteheux@gmail.com and I'll gladly send you a link to read "The Trailer Park Rules" free. (Put "The Trailer Park Rules" in the subject line so I see it. Your park sounds like the fictional one I wrote about. You're going to hate the character Nancy, who manages the park.
I literally wrote a novel about the people in a trailer park being screwed over by a new owner and how that changed everything for them. (It's "The Trailer Park Rules).
The washing machine is such a great example because what they really want is for you to take your clothes out of the machine quickly so that the next person can pay. Such a clear and direct link between getting your attention and generating profit for the company!
As an engineer, this is one of the biggest daily frustrations of capitalism. Building things poorly is a CHOICE that the market reinforces. Take your laptop charger from your last post: we, humans, have the knowledge and industry to build power supplies that last forever. There are companies like Nichicon and Mean Well that build power supplies that last forever. But because it's slightly cheaper to do the bare minimum, that's what we get.
The most frustrating part to me is the word SLIGHTLY! It's slightly more expensive to build 5x better products. Take my own washing machine. I bought an LG because it was the least-worst option. It cleans perfectly and is very water and soap efficient. But I can't get it to balance, because they cheaped out on the shock absorbers to save probably $20 or whatever. The shocks they put in there will wear out in a few years, and they're unreasonably expensive to buy as replacement parts.
Add not even 10% more to the build cost for better shocks and a few other small things, and it would last 5x longer. And so, I sit and imagine what we could do with our industrial capacity as a species if it wasn't tuned up to produce profit first and product second.
I am constantly rambling some form of this essay to anyone that'll listen!
For what purpose does your washer need to text you when you know how long a laundry cycle takes?
How is it a good idea for my neighbors to have digital fob entry instead of a key when the panel can RUN OUT OF BATTERY, or bluetooth error can prohibit people from entering their homes?
Just like you said, it opens the door for so many things to go wrong for an experience that truly doesn't need to be that complicated. give me a god damned physical key and an appliance that doesn't ask me to download an app, if that makes me a luddite i don't care.
My father taught me as a child, the less moving parts, the better. Just more parts that can break. The first example of this that I remember was faucets. He insisted two-handled kitchen faucets were better for this reason. The more effort required, the less complicated machinery. The more autonomy. Standard transmission was superior to automatic. He ended up not too many years later getting one handled faucets and cars with automatic transmissions. The lure of ease, the immediate gratification, over less things to break and needing fixing, which takes time. Time can be money, or it can be time stolen from book reading. Now it’s time AND money. You can’t fix a computerized car or washing machine. You have to call an expert and pay them. It takes time to find a technician, time to spend at home while they fix the appliance, time to get your car to the mechanic and back.
I’m pretty anti-tech as a whole. Blame that on my homesteading upbringing. But, couple tech with the way everything is becoming a subscription based model, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
PE and tech ruin everything, while really offering nothing in return.
Every time I hear my sister in law ask Siri what's the weather like outside instead of looking out the freaking window, I lose hope in the future of humankind.
Ironically I think this opens up a fabulous market for someone to make no-chip (or just "tracks the temperature and makes an alarm go off if it goes wrong" type chips) fridges and other devices. Fortunately my landlord dislikes most such stuff and we have a basic fridge and mostly basic stove. I like as much of my house to be off-grid capable as possible. Just in case. For disability reasons we have fancy network light bulbs but also ...candles.
I constantly complain about how I have to use an app to do laundry! They did make this change in 2020 when there was a coin shortage, so that was helpful, but the downsides override this minor conveinience.
I really should have left this in comments on your last post, but I think it applies here, too. Are you familiar with the Centennial light bulb, which has been burning most of the time since 1901? https://www.centennialbulb.org/
Total $$$ extraction. They put in the digital machines that only use a certain app. And you have to pay to download the app, pay for privilege to use the app & must keep certain balance on your account. As a traveler this really, really blows because of course there isn't 1 universal app, there are dozens. It's cheaper to buy extra pairs of underwear then to wash them. But in the end profit & Capitalism always win.
I know how wonderful washing machines are after watching both my mother and her mother do laundry in more primitive ways. My grandmother lived in a house with no indoor plumbing. She had a cistern pump in the kitchen (from a cistern that collected rainwater). She had to pump the water into a tea kettle and several large pots to get hot water for laundry. When each tubful of water was used she let it flow out the back door onto the ground. She then had to feed each item of clothing through a wringer attached to the top side of the machine and set the clothes aside in a basket. Refill the water with fresh water to rinse things, then through the wringer again, then finally carry the basket of clothes outside to hang them on clotheslines. She must have loved living with my parents in Florida over the winters and using their washing machine and dryer.
In the late 1940s, we had the same kind of washer when we lived in Armonk, only that house had a huge laundry room with clotheslines running along the wall from one side to the other for winter use. My grandmother had the same indoor lines I her attic, in fact. In summer we hung laundry outside on clotheslines as well, only the apple trees along the driveway always had tent caterpillars so we had to be careful about not folding them up into the laundry. Needless to say, it took all day to do all the laundry.
When I lived in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts I had a regular washer and a dryer but I also had lines outside for hanging laundry, same as I had when I lived in a garden apartment in Brooklyn in the 1970s. Clothes dried outside on a line smell incredible. Clean and fresh. Nothing compares. At least doing laundry stopped being an all-day project, even if clothes out of a dryer will never smell as fresh and clean.
I enjoy your content and am a consistent reader and a subscriber. Please use gender neutral terms (eg, salesperson, not salesman); it makes a difference. My paid subscriptions are reserved for those writers who work toward a more equatable world at all levels. Thanks so much!
We don’t really need a new car, but my 10-yr old Golf is getting old (I realize 10 years is not old in some places, but this is Canada folks), so I thought I would take a look around and see what’s on offer.
Everything is so teched up these days, so many cars with a single point of failure wrapped up in one touch screen.
Even ‘low-tech’ cars have more tech than my current vehicle.
I have no idea what I’m going to do when the time comes, especially because the city I live in has decided that one of our jobs no longer needs a bus stop.
Does anyone out there know good options for low-tech vehicles?
I want to know too. We have two really old cars and we know we have to do something. Is it practical to simply put a fortune into keeping old cars running to avoid all this nonsense?
Great post. And I love the idea of colonizing our attention.
I also think about it as the “extraction economy.” The dominance of tech and PE turns our lives into a series of extraction points - huge college loans, exorbitant home prices, medical - all of which make us laborers regardless of level.
If you are not the mine owner, you’re the ore.
The more I learn about PE the worse it gets. They really see anything and everything as an extraction point. Mobile home parks are one I learned about recently, just nightmarish stories of jacking up the rent for people without other options. Unfortunately the "extraction economy" seems spot on to me.
Yup. I live in a mobile home park. Besides raising rent, they tend to create ridiculous rules that they can then fine you for breaking. Last year they arbitrarily decided we needed to repaint the floor of our deck, and only gave us 10 days to do it. We're old. We have neither the ability to do it ourselves, nor the money to pay someone to do it on short notice. So we got fined. We still haven't painted, so will probably get fined again the next time they wander by to look.
Email me at michelleteheux@gmail.com and I'll gladly send you a link to read "The Trailer Park Rules" free. (Put "The Trailer Park Rules" in the subject line so I see it. Your park sounds like the fictional one I wrote about. You're going to hate the character Nancy, who manages the park.
I literally wrote a novel about the people in a trailer park being screwed over by a new owner and how that changed everything for them. (It's "The Trailer Park Rules).
The washing machine is such a great example because what they really want is for you to take your clothes out of the machine quickly so that the next person can pay. Such a clear and direct link between getting your attention and generating profit for the company!
As an engineer, this is one of the biggest daily frustrations of capitalism. Building things poorly is a CHOICE that the market reinforces. Take your laptop charger from your last post: we, humans, have the knowledge and industry to build power supplies that last forever. There are companies like Nichicon and Mean Well that build power supplies that last forever. But because it's slightly cheaper to do the bare minimum, that's what we get.
The most frustrating part to me is the word SLIGHTLY! It's slightly more expensive to build 5x better products. Take my own washing machine. I bought an LG because it was the least-worst option. It cleans perfectly and is very water and soap efficient. But I can't get it to balance, because they cheaped out on the shock absorbers to save probably $20 or whatever. The shocks they put in there will wear out in a few years, and they're unreasonably expensive to buy as replacement parts.
Add not even 10% more to the build cost for better shocks and a few other small things, and it would last 5x longer. And so, I sit and imagine what we could do with our industrial capacity as a species if it wasn't tuned up to produce profit first and product second.
I am constantly rambling some form of this essay to anyone that'll listen!
For what purpose does your washer need to text you when you know how long a laundry cycle takes?
How is it a good idea for my neighbors to have digital fob entry instead of a key when the panel can RUN OUT OF BATTERY, or bluetooth error can prohibit people from entering their homes?
Just like you said, it opens the door for so many things to go wrong for an experience that truly doesn't need to be that complicated. give me a god damned physical key and an appliance that doesn't ask me to download an app, if that makes me a luddite i don't care.
My father taught me as a child, the less moving parts, the better. Just more parts that can break. The first example of this that I remember was faucets. He insisted two-handled kitchen faucets were better for this reason. The more effort required, the less complicated machinery. The more autonomy. Standard transmission was superior to automatic. He ended up not too many years later getting one handled faucets and cars with automatic transmissions. The lure of ease, the immediate gratification, over less things to break and needing fixing, which takes time. Time can be money, or it can be time stolen from book reading. Now it’s time AND money. You can’t fix a computerized car or washing machine. You have to call an expert and pay them. It takes time to find a technician, time to spend at home while they fix the appliance, time to get your car to the mechanic and back.
Repairing a toaster is within living memory. Mine anyway
I’m pretty anti-tech as a whole. Blame that on my homesteading upbringing. But, couple tech with the way everything is becoming a subscription based model, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
PE and tech ruin everything, while really offering nothing in return.
I was raised by nuclear physicists and used to work in IT. I'm pretty anti-tech too. I think we're on to something. 🙂
Capitalism is the world's largest pyramid scheme.
Every time I hear my sister in law ask Siri what's the weather like outside instead of looking out the freaking window, I lose hope in the future of humankind.
Ironically I think this opens up a fabulous market for someone to make no-chip (or just "tracks the temperature and makes an alarm go off if it goes wrong" type chips) fridges and other devices. Fortunately my landlord dislikes most such stuff and we have a basic fridge and mostly basic stove. I like as much of my house to be off-grid capable as possible. Just in case. For disability reasons we have fancy network light bulbs but also ...candles.
I constantly complain about how I have to use an app to do laundry! They did make this change in 2020 when there was a coin shortage, so that was helpful, but the downsides override this minor conveinience.
Could've made laundry freely avaliable as needed. *shrugs*
I really should have left this in comments on your last post, but I think it applies here, too. Are you familiar with the Centennial light bulb, which has been burning most of the time since 1901? https://www.centennialbulb.org/
Total $$$ extraction. They put in the digital machines that only use a certain app. And you have to pay to download the app, pay for privilege to use the app & must keep certain balance on your account. As a traveler this really, really blows because of course there isn't 1 universal app, there are dozens. It's cheaper to buy extra pairs of underwear then to wash them. But in the end profit & Capitalism always win.
I know how wonderful washing machines are after watching both my mother and her mother do laundry in more primitive ways. My grandmother lived in a house with no indoor plumbing. She had a cistern pump in the kitchen (from a cistern that collected rainwater). She had to pump the water into a tea kettle and several large pots to get hot water for laundry. When each tubful of water was used she let it flow out the back door onto the ground. She then had to feed each item of clothing through a wringer attached to the top side of the machine and set the clothes aside in a basket. Refill the water with fresh water to rinse things, then through the wringer again, then finally carry the basket of clothes outside to hang them on clotheslines. She must have loved living with my parents in Florida over the winters and using their washing machine and dryer.
In the late 1940s, we had the same kind of washer when we lived in Armonk, only that house had a huge laundry room with clotheslines running along the wall from one side to the other for winter use. My grandmother had the same indoor lines I her attic, in fact. In summer we hung laundry outside on clotheslines as well, only the apple trees along the driveway always had tent caterpillars so we had to be careful about not folding them up into the laundry. Needless to say, it took all day to do all the laundry.
When I lived in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts I had a regular washer and a dryer but I also had lines outside for hanging laundry, same as I had when I lived in a garden apartment in Brooklyn in the 1970s. Clothes dried outside on a line smell incredible. Clean and fresh. Nothing compares. At least doing laundry stopped being an all-day project, even if clothes out of a dryer will never smell as fresh and clean.
I enjoy your content and am a consistent reader and a subscriber. Please use gender neutral terms (eg, salesperson, not salesman); it makes a difference. My paid subscriptions are reserved for those writers who work toward a more equatable world at all levels. Thanks so much!
We don’t really need a new car, but my 10-yr old Golf is getting old (I realize 10 years is not old in some places, but this is Canada folks), so I thought I would take a look around and see what’s on offer.
Everything is so teched up these days, so many cars with a single point of failure wrapped up in one touch screen.
Even ‘low-tech’ cars have more tech than my current vehicle.
I have no idea what I’m going to do when the time comes, especially because the city I live in has decided that one of our jobs no longer needs a bus stop.
Does anyone out there know good options for low-tech vehicles?
I want to know too. We have two really old cars and we know we have to do something. Is it practical to simply put a fortune into keeping old cars running to avoid all this nonsense?
thanks for putting this into words! amazingly written piece. also the discussion of necessary vs unnecessary innovation kind of reminds me of this article: https://prospect.org/environment/2024-05-30-green-energy-revolution-real-innovation/
It's the phone not the washer ffs
I couldn’t agree more. The “computer” went on my washer so I had to replace it last month.