video blog: the light bulb conspiracy

The Light Bulb Conspiracy

The documentary, ‘The light bulb conspiracy- the untold story of planned obsolescence’

“We live in a society dominated by a growth, whose logic is not creating because we need things, but just for the sake of it.”

Planned obsolescence emerged in the 1920s, the same time as mass production and the consumer society and since has been a crucial factor in the world’s economy. It was the idea of manufacturing fragile products in industries to help keep the world’s economy running by increasing consumer consumption and demand and increase the employment rate. Bernard London—stockbroker tried to make planned obsolescence compulsory (as a result of the Great Depression) to achieve a balance in the market between capital and labour, so “the wheels of industries will keep turning, people will keep consuming and everyone will have a job.” But it was dismissed.

Then in the1950s it reappeared again, but with a “twist”. The idea was to “seduce” the consumers with products by the look and advancement in the technology, something “a little newer, a little sooner than necessary”. (The idea of making the consumer wanting to next new thing) For eg: Brooke Stevens created products that appealed to the consumers.

“Growth society’s logic is not only to grow to meet demand but to grow for the sake of growth, unbounded growth in production that is justified through the boundless growth in consumption” Serg Latouche –noted critic in consumer society. The three factors are advertising, planned obsolescence and credit.

lynn owens, chairman of the lightbulb committee provides us with the example of the longest burning light bulb in the world in Livermore in California.  In 1972 its significance was discovered

–it has been burning since 1901 and already outlasted two webcams. Chaillet (inventor) built his filament to last, however the light bulb became one of the first products to have planned obsolescence. This lead to Phoebeus: to take control of main manufacturers of light-bulbs, where light bulbs were to last up to only 1000 hours à re-designing, testing and manufacturing light bulbs.

The theory behind this was to maintain the flow of the economy and unemployment to a minimum, with the thought that resources were infinite, but that was found to be false. Today, we see the damages caused through production of planned obsolescence, where Electronic waste are claimed as “second-hand goods” (80% of waste are past their lifespan) are shipped to Gahna, destroying their natural land.

People today are re-thinking the engineering and production side of consumer goods, which leads to the new concept: “cradle to cradle”. This idea claims that if factories work like nature, planned obsolensce itself will be obsolete.

Michael Braungart, “Environment is generally linked to saving, reduction, zero waste, etc.” he compares production industries to nature, where nature produces no waste, only nutrients, as it becomes a cycle. However, if manufacturers use nutrients, the products can be used in something new unlike using waste-based materials to create products. Also the increase in manufacturing limited life span products does not necessarily create money to industries since the cost of capital and resources may increase which leads to higher pollution output, whereas if a product was made to last up to 25 years, it can reduce cost in production which can lead to other opportunities for business to grow and reduce the amount of pollution emitted on the planet.

He also uses an “Anti-Growth Society meets Ghandi’s vision: the world is big enough to satisfy everyone’s needs,” but will always be too small to satisfy individual greed”