Hacker Cinema
Planned Obsolescence
Film · short · 9 min
Directed by Margarita Kosareva
A humorous reflection on today’s dating culture. The title refers to an economic term describing a marketing strategy in which the premature decay of a product is deliberately conceived by the manufacturer. This phenomenon can also be observed in short-lived (online dating) situatuionships. In this film, a party turns out to be a breakup ceremony. It is a tribute to all ex-partners.
4 positivefrom 4 commenters
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From YouTube links in the comments below. Most are clips and trailers; “Full” means the uploader says so.
4 comments on Hacker News
The "Planned Obsolescence" documentary is (infuriatingly) great on how goods have degraded in quality over the years.
https://youtu.be/wzJI8gfpu5Y
Seems like a capitalistic society will never get away from products with built-in planned obsolescence. It's all about the profits. Buy and replace consumers...
There's a great documentary on planned obsolescence for those that haven't seen it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdh7_PA8GZU
Okay, a clarification.
The documentary states that planned obsolescence was invented in the US, in wake of the stock market crash of 1920's. Some economists wanted to find a solution for the depression. Initially one of the economists came up with the idea that planned obsolescence should be controlled by the government. Check out Bernard's London paper on the right of this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence The idea was that products would later be gathered and destroyed by a commission or something. A similar approach was used by Phoebus Cartel, which fined factories which made light bulbs lasting over 1000 years. According to the documentary, it still exists after multiple name changes.
I don't remember the exact details, but the documentary then proceeds to show many commercials and famous designers who promoted new goods with short life span. Instead of the government making people give up their stuff and destroy it once time is up, the focus was on "low quality" and advertising.
Here's the link to full polish version on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPPW8KM7eEU
It's dubbed, but you can hear many interviewed people talk in english. I'm a native polish speaker. Treat it as a teaser :-). Points of interest: - nylon stockings at 27:10 - at 16:10, an interview with a woman who met Bernard London. A few minutes later the section with commercials starts. "Planned obsolescence. A desire by the consumer to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary..."
The documentary doesn't mention STEAM, but I think it's similar. STEAM is DRM in sheep's clothing. It comes bundled with so many extras (I can live without) such as friends lists, IM, automatic patching. These days, people are asking developers to publish on STEAM. They are seduced.
As for games in general and planned obsolescence - after watching this documentary I think I know why so many games these days are linear, story-based and short.
Another market that goes to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence ?
There is a great documentary (from Arte I think) about this, cannot find links right now.