Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America (review)

Cultures can achieve affluence either by wanting little and producing little or wanting much and producing much, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins taught us. The strength of Giles Slade's Made to Break as history is its exploration of how professionals in twentieth-century America wrestled with the ethics and practicalities of moving from the former to the latter. Slade reveals engineers, marketing consultants, and activists arguing among themselves and in public about the benefits and costs of repetitive consumption—replacing products that have not yet worn out. He draws on trade journals, corporate documents, and the popular press to show that U.S. culture did not move unquestioningly toward infinite wants that were capable of absorbing top-speed innovation and production. Legitimating wasted materials, wasted human skills, and toxic wastes did not come easily.

This exploration was not Slade's primary goal, however. Instead, he sought to tell a "collection of stories" about how "mounds of hazardous materials and a poisoned water supply" became America's "legacies to the future" (pp. 6–7). His many stories illustrate "deliberate obsolescence" categorized as psychological, technological, and planned. Most of his examples come from secondary sources, and they include the classic juxtaposition of Henry Ford and Alfred Sloan as masters of their respective cultures of durability and style, the latter the driving force behind psychological obsolescence. Early radio's competitive battles illustrate the technological obsolescence that follows innovation. Planned obsolescence acquired the ominous label "death dating" during the 1950s, but even in the 1930s, General Electric was already seeking to limit the life span of flashlight bulbs in order to maximize sales under monopoly conditions.

At midcentury, renewed protests surfaced against the seductions of innovation. Vance Packard and Volkswagen advertisements carry the flag here against deliberate obsolescence. In this part of the book and throughout, a longer perspective would have enriched the debates about durability and obsolescence. Without reference to principles that had guided humanity in managing with little when little was all it had, what drove industrialists and marketers to justify moving down the slippery slope to wastefulness?

Without perspective across time or cultures, Slade can only assert, not demonstrate or explain, that "deliberate obsolescence [is] a uniquely American invention." No one questions the uniqueness of the monstrous scale of waste here and now. But excess doomed more than one preindustrial civilization to environmental disaster, and other nations' innovations have led to premature replacement. What about American abundance and culture explains the crisis? In lieu of historical depth, Slade riddles his text with unsubstantiated "firsts" and "mosts" that sometimes contradict each other. Details abound that do not pertain to the rising acceptance of obsolescence. (A half-dozen pages on radio pioneer Edwin Armstrong's courtship and marriage typify this excess.) The most original chapter, "Weaponizing Planned Obsolescence," says nothing at all about American culture or industry. In this 1980s tale of espionage—itself filled with distracting minutiae—the Soviet Union illegally acquired U.S. technologies deliberately made defective. The ensuing costly and humiliating disasters contributed to its demise.

What's to be done? The last page of a distressing final chapter on "Cell Phones and E-Waste" offers some hope for ending the "golden age of obsolescence" through green design, planned disassembly, and recycling that does not simply dump toxins into currency-starved nations. Yet there is no mention that policy matters, that other nations and some U.S. states and cities already foster ameliorative policies. These are not inexpensive; they require citizens' accepting responsibility, then investing in and empowering strong agencies. Depending on "responsive manufacturers" to recognize the "overwhelming problem of waste" and correct their ways (p. 281) will not suffice.

Slade's compilation includes some new evidence and thoughtful reflections, but it yields neither a sustained narrative nor an analysis. His pleasant style and good intentions might have produced a useful classroom tool or a book that presents important questions, insights, and guidance to the general public. Instead, Made to Break serves best...