Is Digitization Catastrophic for Civilization?
Is Digitization Catastrophic for Civilization? A common-sense, practical case can be made for “yes.”
The answer draws upon a number of my list of The 20 Dynamics That Will Shape the Next Decade, especially #13, over-optimization.
The fundamental dynamics of any civilization are 1) the quantity / scale of resources available to support the civilization and 2) how are those resources invested / consumed.
As a generalization, the analog world lends itself to durability in a number of critical ways. Prior to the Age of Hydrocarbons, the limits of available resources optimized a focus on durability, as there simply weren’t enough resources available to squander on projects that were ephemeral. (When resources were squandered on ephemeral projects, that hastened the collapse of the offending civilization.)
The book The Upside of Down begins with an account of the immensity of the resources that had to be assembled to construct the Coliseum in ancient Rome.
If all those resources had been used to build a structure that only lasted five years, the structure could not have been rebuilt in five years because the civilization had devoted most of its surplus resources to the initial construction.
Per #4 in my list, the current global civilization is based on “no limits”: since human ingenuity is limitless, so are resources and solutions.
Based on this belief of “no limits,” we assume there will always be enough resources for everything we conjure up, durable and ephemeral alike.
The possibility that using resources for things that must constantly be replaced could deplete the affordable resources at the scale necessary to constantly replace everything doesn’t register in a “no limits” world.
But this “no limits” world isn’t the real world, it’s a fantasy world constructed of modern mythologies. The real world is inherently limited in a number of ways.
Humans understood this in the pre-oil eras, and so the examples of Progress that were celebrated were durable public works. Yes, lavish public displays were common at the height of civilizations, but as resources were either depleted or became costly due to ephemeral consumption, then these lavish displays became less common or disappeared entirely.
The core problem with digitization is that it is optimized for short-term profits generated by replacement via planned obsolescence and accelerated product cycles, which demand a continuous flood of new novelties and updated models that obsolete previous versions to drive sales.
This optimization of replacement rather than durability also optimizes minimizing repairability and maintaining inventories of spare parts: if the product will be replaced in a year and isn’t expected to last longer than five years, then why spend money that could be taken as profits on maintaining costly inventories?
It doesn’t make financial sense to sacrifice profits for repairability, maintaining inventories of spare parts or durability.
The problem with products dependent on digital components / electronics is they can only be repaired with the exact same component. This is in marked contrast with analog devices, which lend themselves to repairs even if the original parts are scarce, costly or unavailable.
Here are examples from my own experience.
This is a photo of my current project, strengthening our 70-year old light-construction house against hurricanes. The Skilsaw is analog; it has no motherboard or electronic components. It has a 13-amp electric motor with brushes, bearings and a switch. It has lubricating oil for the worm-drive gears. Should any of these components fail, another saw could be cannibalized for the needed parts. With modest care, this saw could easily last 50 years.
Analog repairs can be kludgy and still work. When the ignition/key switch in my old Volkswagen Beetle broke 40 years ago, I replaced it with two cheap toggle switches. As you know from watching films of car thieves hot-wiring cars, there are three wires in the ignition: twisting two wires together activates the electrical system of the vehicle, and touching these wires with the third wire activates the starter motor to start the car.
The toggle switches handled these two operations: flipping the first switch turned on the electrical system, and flipping the second toggle for a few seconds started the car.
I’ve repaired a great many things in my 52 years of adulthood: cars, tools, bicycles, appliances, houses, furniture, stone walls, and so on. I recently repaired a gutter downspout by reconfiguring an aluminum beer can. (Guinness to the rescue.) This is the analog world.
Compare this to the digitally-dependent world. If your washer or dryer fails, you can (if you’re willing) remove the top or back and find the electronic boards and components, one of which failed, turning your appliance (or car) into a brick.’
Inside the appliance is a helpful sheet listing the repair codes and which buttons to hold to display them.
The failed digital board cannot be replaced with a similar board–it must be the exact same board. There are many connectors and so hot-wiring the electronics to bypass the failed board isn’t an option.
If this component is no longer available, the appliance is unrepairable. It’s a brick that must be disposed of at the landfill / recycling depot.
What happens to devices that are potentially repairable but spare parts are no longer available because nobody maintained inventories or the equipment to make spare parts? They too become landfill.
A reader recently related the story of his high-end “lifetime guarantee” appliance which failed. The repair service had been offloaded to the third-party–a common practice nowadays– and this third-party provider had informed the reader that parts were no longer available so the “lifetime guarantee” could not be fulfilled.
This is an example of over-optimization: everything that might have extended the service life of the product has been stripped away to optimize next quarter’s profits.
Many readers have shared stories of their parents’ refrigerator, freezer, washer, etc., still working 40 or 50 years after the initial purchase. My own experience is that modern appliances typically fail in a few years. I was able to replace the blown motherboard in a dryer, but this board–a few cheap commodity chips and molded plastic–was priced at an extortionist rate: roughly half the cost of a new dryer.
Consider the systemic costs of this optimization of replacement on the scale of an entire civilization.
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