1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910974570103321

Autore

Slade Giles

Titolo

Made to break : technology and obsolescence in America / / Giles Slade

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, Mass., : Harvard University Press, 2006

ISBN

9780674043756

0674043758

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (336 p.)

Classificazione

ZG 9080

Disciplina

609.73

Soggetti

Technological innovations - United States

Product obsolescence - United States

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [283]-312) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Repetitive Consumption -- 2. The Annual Model Change -- 3. Hard Times -- 4. Radio, Radio -- 5. The War and Postwar Progress -- 6. The Fifties and Sixties -- 7. Chips -- 8. Weaponizing Planned Obsolescence -- 9. Cell Phones and E-Waste -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Made to Break is a history of twentieth-century technology as seen through the prism of obsolescence. Giles Slade explains how disposability was a necessary condition for America's rejection of tradition and our acceptance of change and impermanence. This book gives us a detailed and harrowing picture of how, by choosing to support ever-shorter product lives, we may well be shortening the future of our way of life as well.