Page 76 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

5 DIGITAL DESIRES: MEDIATED CONSUMERISM AND CLIMATE CRISIS 61

obsolescence into its devices at an early stage, making them difficult (using
the notorious customised ‘pentalob’ screw) or impossible to open (Lewis
2016). Nearly all leading manufacturers have followed suit, replacing ear-
lier models, which enabled you to change components, with sealed phones
with a guaranteed limited lifespan. When Samsung’s new phone was
released in 2015 it was, unlike its forerunners, hermetically sealed. This
‘upgrade’ brought them in line with their competitors, meaning users will
no longer be able to change the battery or upgrade storage. Consumers
will now struggle to buy a phone that will last longer than its battery life.
This is now the industry standard. At the time of writing, the only phone
company on the market that allows you to change batteries, faulty or
outdated components is Fairphone, a social enterprise company based in
Amsterdam, whose aim is to “create a positive social and environmental
impact from the beginning to the end of a phone’s life cycle” (https://
www.fairphone.com/en/our-goals/). While a Fairphone will last consid-
erably longer than any other phone on the market, it is not available at
most retailers. Fairphone’s survival is, in this sense, precarious, not only
because of its marginality but because it has abandoned what is
undoubtedly a profitable business model. Here we see a direct contradic-
tion between economic sustainability in a consumerist economy and envi-
ronmental sustainability.
The design of a phone used to be emblematic of a whole decade—today
the average life of a phone is 12–18 months. The same temporality applies
to most of the devices we buy—the cycle of replacement for TVs, laptops,
iPads, gaming consoles or any other digital device has become bewilder-
ingly brief. The idea that something should be built to last is, it seems, so
last century.
The digital revolution has, in that sense, speeded up the production
cycle. It has brought with it significant improvements—notably in com-
puter power and capacity—and many of us can remember upgrades that
were genuinely better than what came before. But these improvements are
usually accompanied by mediocrity and flimsiness—the quality of sound on
most gadgets, for example, is no better than it was in the Sony Walkman’s
of a bygone age. As the gurus of planned obsolescence know all too well,
perfection can only be sold once.
The media and communications industry has also used marketing
strategies to institutionalise obsolescence, to create the idea that in the
digital age progress depends upon the regular replacement of devices. Again,