Is there planned obsolescence for information?

I attended a talk last night by John de Graaf Dave Wann, co-author of Affluenza, hosted by the Rocky Mountain Chapter of SLA. He's a tendentious speaker; I don't like getting an hour of politics, even when I agree with the point of view. So I amused myself by looking for ways to relate his screed about over-consumption to the information industry. Yes, I'm an info-nerd.

One of Wann's topics was planned obsolescence. Having spent way too much time dealing with Intuit and its customer-hostile upgrade practices regarding QuickBooks, I couldn't agree more. But then I started wondering whether there was such a thing as planned information obsolescence. Are there instances where information is designed or presented in such a way that it has an artificially limited life span? By the end of Wann's talk, I'd thought of several.

• When data is delivered in a physical medium such as a DVD, it requires the continuing availability of equipment and software that can read data in that medium. The digital photos I took 10 years ago are still on Iomega zip drives, and I have neither the hardware nor software to read the disks.
• Business software is often complex enough to require some level of customer service and maintenance. Most software companies discontinue support for their products after a certain period of time, requiring customers to pay for extended service or newer versions of the software.
• Textbooks are notorious for being frequently updated, and consequently repaginated, requiring students to buy new editions rather than used copies.
• E-content subscriptions, in which the archive is only available as long as the account is active, turn subscriptions into rentals. 

Some of these issues can be circumvented by relying on open source software and open access publications. Yes, I now store all my digital photos in the cloud, and I download all the software I buy.

But it will take a radical change in the market to eliminate the financial incentive of information providers, in all their forms, to build obsolescence into their products. As with iDevices with their virtually unreplaceable batteries, sometimes we just hold our nose and, well, consume.

 

Comments

[Barbara Burton]

Hey MEB,
Interesting post. (Had to look up tendentious but it was worth it).
Of course the entire news industry is kind of enforced obsolescence...people used to wrap fish in the old newspapers before the digital age began. And what about encyclopedias and their annual yearbooks...now Library books sales won't even take them!