Worn out
Interesting little movie from Ryan Kothe. Where this ties in to innovation is from the post on Core77 where I found this video in which the poster remarks on the quality and restorability of a 1938 Singer sewing machine:
I recently restored a 1938 Singer sewing machine as a friend's birthday gift. The gears are all metal, which explains why I was easily able to get the 73-year-old machine running like it was brand-new. Singer's plastic-geared machines from the 1960s, on the other hand, would not be so easy to restore. The plastic gears can simply rot.
There's a maxim that everyone today seems to adhere to about new products being more cheaply made than their predecessors; that everything now is designed with a shelf life whereas in the past they were built to last. What are we making today that is designed to last more than a few years? With electronics, it's on the order of months and weeks.
