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Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. By Giles Slade. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006; pp. 336. $27.96 cloth.
Giles Slade, a Canadian-born freelance writer and journalist, closes his introductory remarks for Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America with a question of cultural legacy: "If human history reserves a privileged place for the Egyptians because of their rich conception of the afterlife, what place will it reserve for a people who, in their seeming worship of convenience and greed, leave behind mountains of electronic debris?" (7). The electronic debris to which he refers is the product of our cultural tendency to discard functioning technology at an unprecedented rate. Slade focuses on the issue of planned obsolescence and the machinations that made it what it is today. Using historical texts and rhetoric from key events and fi gures in American history, Slade weaves a compelling chronology of planned obsolescence as a phenomenon and its implications for the global environment.
Slade defi nes planned obsolescence as "the assortment of techniques used to artifi cially limit the durability of a manufactured good in order to stimulate repetitive consumption" (5). This concept was given a formal name in 1928, but Slade demonstrates that the idea was subtly fostered as early as the late 1800s. Since that time, variations of planned obsolescence have made their mark on the American economy. Slade explores the role of obsolescence in advertising, economic strategies, corporate power struggles, and even Cold War espionage. The chapters chronicle a series of historical events that triggered, defi ned, and perpetuated this now common practice.
Chapters 1 and 2 link the early development of manufacturing to the concept of repetitive consumption. Slade explains the issues of demand and distribution related to overproduction faced by American manufacturers and...