Made to Break - Ch. 2 reflection

Second unit of English class: “Made to Break” and E-waste.

The theme for chapter 2 of Made to Break, is about planned, psychological and technological obsolescence of automobiles in the 20’s and changing the make and appearance annually: “national automobile championship.” It talks about Ford’s and GM’s competition for customers and the difference of values that Henry Ford and Alfred Sloan had. First it was about the quality of the cars and selling techniques and then moving to the style and looks of cars. Beauty became the new business tool. Companies worked on outdating their own models more than trying to compete with other older company models. GM moved to developing dynamic obsolescence- what I call fast obsolescence. Psychological obsolescence was featured by the use of the “out-of-fashion” technique. Not only Ford and GM but movies, songs and books worked on the technique of repetitive consumption.

I was not aware of the competition Ford and GM went through: from quality to appearance to fighting with each other for customers. Ford was ahead but stubborn and stuck with his values while Sloan went with the flow of sales and grew quicker. In just a few years cars grew so much with technology and style. I also was not aware that people analyzed the fall of Ford and success of GM’s products and why everything happened with quality and style. I didn’t know that people took cars so seriously as a need to “satisfy their pride.” People would size up one another based on disposable income and taste (the intro and chapter 1 was about the development of the disposable income).

This chapter is parallel to the e-waste videos we watched in class because by making new models of cars annually, leaves consumers to trade their cars to upgrade or it leaves them to throw the cars away if they don’t run well anymore. Throwing them away is harmful to the environment. Other products that chapter 2 refers to is other electronics and makings of better technology leaves consumers to throw away obsolete products when new ones are introduced. One example is where the book talks about how electricity began to replace steam as the driving force of industry.