I’ve heard stories of a lightbulb that has been working for a hundred years, and to this day it still gives a good amount of light.
I’ve heard people use this lightbulb as proof that Capitalists have been fooling us all along into believing that things stop working and new ones need to be bought.
This is an extreme example of programmed obsolescence, the idea that companies make things (tech mostly) stop working to ensure that we have to come back and buy new ones.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt that there’s truth in that, and it’s clear that companies have some strong incentives to ensure that customers come back. However, I find it hard to believe that they could ever go to that extreme: that tech could work literally for a hundred years if companies wanted to make it so.
(there’s also the argument that even if it could do that, you wouldn’t want to use the same lightbulb for a hundred years because of Progress)
Thus, I’d like to investigate this lightbulb and find out if it’s real. But before I do so, I’d like to establish why I find it hard to believe.
Hypothesis: Tech companies could make eternal* tech but they choose not to do so because of economic incentives.
Evidence: There’s a lightbulb that has been working for a hundred years. If tech companies really wanted tech to last as long as possible, all lightbulbs could be replaced by this lightbulb and they wouldn’t have to be replaced again in a long time. The fact that this doesn’t happen proves that companies are not interested in making tech work as long as possible, and instead have made up some limits to ensure we come back again and again.
If this lightbulb exists, why wouldn’t it be used extensively?
- it’s not economically viable to do so (e.g. it doesn’t make enough light, it costs too much to build)
- there’s a lot of people interested in it not being used, and they have a lot of resources to ensure it stays like that
I also doubt this lightbulb exists in any way that is useful because it wouldn’t only challenge my economical and societal beliefs, but also my model of physics and some deeper beliefs about Life and the Universe. Basically:
- I don’t know of any process in the universe that doesn’t produce waste, and that doesn’t use up the instruments it is using. Everything from stars, life to black holes is born and dies, and I find it hard to believe that that was a capitalist invention.
- Life is change. Everything in the universe changes constantly, nothing is static or eternal. It would make no sense for a lightbulb invented by humans to be able to defy this.