Technology halted for consumerism

For years now people have discussed and made accusations of the electronic and other industries having technology and equipment beyond that which we are currently using but will not release it while the current systems are still being used and profits being made.

Basically ,while they are still making money why move onto the next big thing. Once sales start to slow they release the new technology they had been sitting on for years.

For example, the DVD was said to have been developed in the mid 90s and release in the late 90s yet I remember hearing about music and videos on a metal disc as early as the mid/late 80s

Now Blue ray is being released I would like to know how long they have had that for? What is next or for that matter the next few things to come out?

This goes for all industries I feel, including but not restricted to automotive and household goods.
Is this just wild speculation by the masses or are the public being deprived of the latest gadgets for the sake of the dollar?

Of course they are.

Look at cellphones in the United States as clear proof. The asian market has cellphones that make the ones in the USA look 10 years old.

I still recall when the first color screen cellphones launched in the United States. I worked as a sales associate in radio shack at the time. We once got a shipment of flyers for samsung phones but it was in japanese. The phones had cameras and high speed internet access, two things unheard of in the USA at the time.

I had to go out and push some piece of garbage color phone as though it was state of the art.

One time we had a korean business stop in the store. He had a samsung wristwatch cellphone. That one still hasnt made it to the US market.

In a world of uncertainty, if you can find a way to virtually guarantee income for a long period of time, you're on an island of safety when everyone else is treading water. These are artificial constructs of a monetary system that progressively implodes.


Industry is doing all it can to keep up with the system and hold their heads above water, not aware of their fundamental causes. Here are a couple of examples.


Intel has come out year after year with "advances in technology" with their cpu computer chips. In reality, there are very small advances with each generation. What they have done is create a manufacturing process that can be scaled over a very long lifespan without much change in the process itself.

30 years ago a computer chip might have 10,000 transistors. By 1990 they had a million. Today they're crossing the billion transistor threshold. All of this sounds impressive, but in reality it's just the same old manufacturing method but on smaller scales. They literally use optical magnification techniques to change the product they manufacture.


They had a choice of jumping far ahead in capacity and transistor count, but they didn't. The option to scale computer chips to 1/10th of the trace width in 1 step was not financially sound. Not that it couldn't turn a profit... it just couldn't turn a continual profit over 30 years.


Instead, with each new step they scale it to 85% of the previous trace width, then milk that level for all the money its worth. This way, they have a sure way of getting many more cycles of profit in before they really are forced to develop a new technology. They've been doing this for 35 years, and only now are having to come up with new ways of making computers smaller. They could have given us what we have today many years ago (but there wouldn't have been much profit in that!)


Also, many of the chips they create come off the same line. Some of the chips are deliberately crippled to create a chip they can sell at a lower price point, making the non-crippled chips look like a premium product. The "premium" product is much more desirable, and sells for a much greater profit margin. More profit is made out of the top 5th than the bottom 4 quality levels combined. They destroy some of the top level product so that there is a lower-level product to make it seem more valuable to the psychology of the consumer.


The idea would be similar to a car manufacturer building a V-8 engine, then sealing off the intake manifold to 4 of the cylinders. The "4-cylinder" engine has 300 dollars profit on it, the "real" V-8 makes the company $3,000. If there were only 1 kind of engine, they'd have to settle for much smaller profit overall.


Gone are the days when a craftsman or reputable company would make a quality product that outlasted the competition by at least one order of magnitude. Why build something that lasts, and sell it once, when you can build something that breaks to keep the customer coming back over and over again?


When the whole industry settles on an agreed-to lifespan for a particular type of product, you don't have to worry about a steady revenue stream. With cars today it's like splitting hairs. They all cost too much, are obsolete too soon, look too much alike, and break down after 5-7 years.


It's all about chasing the dollar. There are plenty of products, just not enough money to go around to keep everyone and everything financially afloat. Bankruptcy and foreclosure is a sure thing in a debt-based economy. The spectre of fractional-reserve banking and issuance of currency with automatic debt attached keeps us running on a treadmill that's moving faster and faster as the years go by. Don't forget, these are symptoms of a system that doesn't have to be this way... but we'll have to do the dirty work to change it.


There will be a day where it will hurt less to confront the monster that is the banking system, than the pain it will cost us to continue living with it.





[edit on 27-5-2008 by ianr5741]

Another idea I had was that maybe we get toned down versions of certain gadgets as hand-me-downs from places like NASA and other alphabet agencies after they have had them for possibly years. Once they have had their run or they are obsolete (by their terms) the patent is sold for huge dollars to various industries.
How many times have you seen a product advertised as being ‘designed by NASA’ etc…

From the Roswell incident,to now, is a time to pay close scrutiny to. Before Roswell, the radios for example, had just vacuum tubs for transistors and the first computer chip wasn't invented until the sixty's which was after Roswell. Theres a considerable technological gap in development between before Roswell and the years following after it. So, what we basically did is steal some of the alien technology and use it for our selves. The very computers we are using are "toned down" primitive versions of actual alien designs as not to arise suspicions. The schematics or the blue prints of these original designs are kept and sold to company's for latter development of there products.

I think technology is delayed, pending what people will pay to get it.

I recall being very young, on a school field trip to the Science and Industry museum in Chicago, where there was a display of technology where people could view who they were talking to on the phone.

I am 52 (oh gosh) and I think I was about 10 when I saw this.

They had the technology then........I think what brought it into mainstream was getting people to pay for it.