PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE used to be a joke, a pathetic sort of capitalist propaganda that aimed to make suckers buy new cars with sharp fins or safety razors with finer blades.
Appeals to a consumer's sense of style seemed as harmless as specious mechanical engineering claims. Even if these companies spent millions of dollars to persuade you to buy their stuff, the choice was yours. The insecure and the gullible were welcome to burn their money in quest of an identity makeover or scientific breakthrough; but thrifty cars and older model razors worked just as well and were just as available as the newer models.
In recent decades, however, there has been a new twist to the old concept of designing things that would have to be replaced while they still worked well.
Thanks to fundamental technological changes, you don't get to choose anymore.
For many products (cars, computer software, CDs, to name a few), the choices are rigged. Older technologies are scrapped; not because they were less efficient, but because the new, improved systems cost more: i.e., cost a little more to manufacture and a lot more to buy or maintain.
It can be as difficult to buy a decent car that won't cost a fortune to operate as it is to find an apartment in a city lousy with millionaires.
After hearing horror stories of relatives spending thousands on routine check-ups (the "electronic" tune-up), my partner set out to buy an old car that would be easy to keep and, for the most part, unnecessary to repair. It took weeks of picking through the classifieds and a flash of luck, but she managed to score a 1985 Toyota that looked and drove like it really had gone only 52,000 miles.
Conditioned to years of planned obsolescence on the part of car makers, I perversely admire them for structurally institutionalizing the need to buy newer, expensive-to-operate machines.
Besides, their attempts to provide a cheap model for people who just want a plain set of wheels (Chrysler K cars) have flopped.
What's strange, though, is how the concept of forcing people to buy only one kind of new "improved" technology has caught on in areas where consumers might be thought to have more functional bullshit detectors, if only because the products are supposed to be the essence of simplicity: bicycles.
Like their four-wheeled nemeses, bicycles have undergone such technological "advances" in recent years, one shop owner told me some of his mechanics would have trouble repairing my old road bike, a 1980s Bianchi.
One problem with old bikes is that parts are getting scarce (unlike cars, bikes don't have junkyards dedicated to giving Rottweilers something to do), so when things begin to break regularly, it makes sense to buy a new machine.
The problem with the new machines, though, is that designs can be driven by a need to flash something glitzy and needlessly complicated.
Take the shifters. Older models had two levers on the down tube or on the handlebar stem, where it was easy to reach down or up to get to them. Then they migrated to the ends of the handlebars and onto the handles of the handlebars. Although I prefer shifters on the down tube, between the legs, with a short run of cable to the derailleurs, the handlebar placements are elegant and convenient.
What doesn't make sense to me is the system of shifting that has universally replaced the simpler set-ups. Now there are four levers instead of two. They are mounted on or next to the brake levers. Two levers shift up and two shift down for front and rear sprockets.
Although "index shifting" makes shifting more precise (it's easier not to get caught between gears), practice makes any rider more precise.
The best arguments for the new shifters may be the demands of the widespread gear choices (as if anyone needs 24 gears, as if anyone HAS 24 speeds).
Some high-performance fans also tout the advantage of never having to take your hands off the brakes. Mostly, though, the new shifters' function to help make bikes more expensive and harder to repair (unless you take them to the shop).
What's really strange is the ubiquity of these gizmos. You want to spend $1000 on your main vehicle? The four-lever shifter is the standard.
The older, simpler systems have become quaint, customized options.
TOMORROW: Our recent Vancouver trek.
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