For decades a fridge, dishwasher, oven, well, just about any appliance, would often have a lifespan of twenty plus years and was relatively easy to repair, often by ourselves. Remember Maytags advertising where the repair guy was so bored? Maytag still says they’re dependable, but that repair guy branding? Gone. Why? The same reasons for most all other appliances and devices; built-in disposability and life-span.
An article by another Medium writer on paper coffee cups, got me thinking that it was a perfect metaphor for so much of consumer electronics and where we may have been heading with regard to these technologies in the future. The good news is that particular dystopian consumer future may not be as determined as its creators had hoped for.
Looking back, home appliances were the canary in coal mine when it comes to understanding where consumer technology was heading for years. The ultimate goal was probably as futurist Kevin Kelly laid it out in his 2016 book “The Inevitable”, in which the underlying theme is that essentially, people will no longer own things. Everything will be a subscription. From food and clothes to computers, furniture and well, everything.
A signal that this was a model many a corporation seemed to agree on was the rise of Netflix and streaming services, the decline of cable television, the rapid rise of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) sector then Platform-as-a-Service (think AWS, Oracle and Azure), now Data-as-a-Service and that is a slippery slope to Everything-as-a-Service. Kelly was onto something. Until he wasn’t.
Streaming services seemed like entertainment manna from heaven. No ads. Binge watching. A cultural activity even before the pandemic. And then it wasn’t. The barriers to entry to become a streaming service were fairly low for existing media companies. They had back catalogues for nostalgia. Netflix had proven creating your own new content was possible, perhaps profitable?
