What’s a conspiracy theory you actually find believable?
I bought a Tivoli Audio radio about 25 years ago. Part of the attraction was the philosophy behind it. Henry Kloss had spent decades designing audio equipment and, late in life, returned to something wonderfully simple: one really good radio.
No screen. No app. No software updates. A wooden cabinet, an analogue dial, excellent reception and warm sound. It still works.
That feels almost subversive now. Kloss believed in simplicity, good engineering and longevity. The aim was not to keep persuading you to buy another radio. It was to make one that could last for decades.
My conspiracy theory is that our economy needs us to become dissatisfied with things that are still perfectly good.
Not because executives are secretly plotting to make everything fail, but because businesses need recurring revenue. If you make something so good that people keep it for 30 years, eventually you face an awkward question: what do you sell them next?
So we get new models, additional features, upgrades and ecosystems. Innovation is valuable, of course. But somewhere along the way we began assuming that innovation and progress were the same thing. Perhaps they aren’t. A sophisticated product that becomes unusable after eight years may not be better designed than a simple one that still works after 25. Perhaps the best product is sometimes simply the one you don’t need to replace.
Which leaves me with a harder question than whether planned obsolescence exists. Can we build an economy in which companies prosper because their products last, rather than despite the fact that they do? Perhaps good design begins with a surprisingly unfashionable idea: This is enough. It does what it needs to do. It does it well. And it doesn’t need replacing.
The Afterword 
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