SHELF LIFE

Why technology has a longevity problem

- WRITER: JONATHAN BELL

Despite the petabytes of personal memories, media, culture and history that exist within the distant data centres that cloud our horizons, the way we engage with these os and is alters with each innovation, update and new product launch. No sooner had we got wise to early consumer capitalism's planned obsolescence, a sneaky way of ensuring a steady stream of repeat business with minimum effort, then this ruse shape-shifted to become a defining part of what makes something modern: the upgrade cycle.

Was there ever a golden era of long-lasting tech? Perhaps the 1970s, when performance was predicated on quality, and digitisation hadn't begun the conversion of all analogue media into code. A vinyl LP was a persistent, enduring object with decades of history and decades of life still to live. If you bought a Linn Sondek LP12 turntable back when it debuted in 1973, perhaps to listen to Pink Floyd's new LP, The Dark Side of the Moon, there's every chance you could still be enjoying the combo today.

You would be lucky to get five years out of a contemporary device, let alone half a century of longevity. The digital era has made compliance with updates and upgrades an essential condition of engagement with everyday life. As home computing took off in the 1980s, a new obsolescence arose in the form of processing power. In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made his famous prediction that circuit density and hence computing power would double every two years, perhaps for the next decade or so. Moore's Law actually held fast for at least 50 years, depending on who you ask, but it was accompanied by the dreaded spectre of software bloat, as complexity and functions were ramped up to soak up the available performance.