Culture of Planned Obsolescence of Products

Why do things break so fast? And why do we keep buying replacements we don't need?In 1924, the world's leading lightbulb manufacturers met in Geneva and agreed to cut the lifespan of the incandescent bulb from 2,500 hours to 1,000. That single decision launched a century-long experiment in engineered disposability—one that now governs everything from smartphones and fast fashion to pharmaceuticals and the buildings we inhabit.The Culture of Planned Obsolescence of Products is a sweeping, well researched examination of how deliberate product mortality became the organizing logic of modern capitalism—and how it reshaped not just our economies, but our identities, our psychologies, and our relationship to the material world.Tracing the phenomenon from the Phoebus Cartel through Brooks Stevens' "e;planned desire"e; doctrine to today's software-driven obsolescence and subscription economies, Aishik Dutta reveals the interlocking systems that sustain a throwaway civilization: the GDP growth imperative, shareholder value maximization, the erosion of repair skills, the manufacturing of consumer inadequacy, and the export of toxic waste to the Global South.Yet this is not merely a story of corporate greed. It is a story of culture—of how we learned to define ourselves through what we discard, how the vocabulary of "e;upgrading"e; colonized our sense of time, and how the simple act of mending a broken object became a radical gesture of resistance.Featuring sector-by-sector analysis across electronics, fashion, automotive, healthcare, and the built environment, and a forward-looking roadmap of policy reforms, alternative business models, and cultural transformations, this book is both a definitive account and a call to imagine a post-obsolescence world.This is the essential book for understanding why nothing lasts, and what it would take to change that.