E-Waste is amazing.<p>Here's a clip form a programme about luxury goods. This is about the e-waste dump in Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana.<p>(<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sch78" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sch78</a>)<p>(<a href="http://videobam.com/rcEUM" rel="nofollow">http://videobam.com/rcEUM</a>)<p>It's pretty depressing. There's no kind of sensible plan to recovering useful stuff. Seeing a boy smashing polyester / polystyrene capacitors off an old PCB with a rock so he can sell them is just grim.<p>All the lead, tin, copper, heavy metals, leach into the soil and thus water supply. Wires and cables are burnt to get rid of the insulation and leave copper - these fires happen in the open air, with no kind of masking.<p>I love the idea of tiny, cheap, single purpose electronics. But often the quality is not great; and they're totally locked down. Manufacturers should learn that leaving some test pads on the boards, and putting a few documents on some websites, means that hackers will tinker, and that can lead to a lot of publicity.
It is disappointing to me that as companies, as engineers, and as people, we don't consider the end of life for hardware components.<p>There must be a better solution than building things that are expected to simply be thrown away.
Dear capitalist America,<p>Even the notion of hardware that is disposable is appalling and out of tune in the state of the world today. Please, don't focus on cheap production of items that are intended to have a short lifespan.<p>We need modular hardware. New camera came out and you really want a new camera? Sure, go ahead, upgrade the one you have on your iModularPhone.<p>Need crash-proof stuff? Sure, here is some of our flexible screen phones.<p>You see, durability, for the end user, could as well mean cheapness. Upgradeability, for the end user, could as well mean cheapness.<p>So, instead of dreaming the perfect product, or as a hacker have the need to improve and upgrade, please don't even for one second accept cheap, fragile items.<p>Limited features is ok (but possibility to upgrade is non-optional). Limited lifespan is never ok.
I'm really disappointed that the (clickbait?) tagline is about "disposable" hardware, when one might more positively look at the implications and impact of ubiqitous computing (<i>sans</i> disposable hardware). A $600 tablet device is a far different beast from a $60 or even a $6 tablet device. For example, how can a device improve when it's cheap for its sensors and UI to extend throughout a building (e.g. the Nest)?<p>A $600 mobile device is expensive enough that it's still "personal computing". The cheaper devices start to become "user interface of our environment".<p>Also, RIP Mark Weiser[1]. It's too bad he didn't live to see all this stuff coming to fruition.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weiser" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weiser</a>
I bought 3 of these [0] for £10 each from phones4u the other day, they are a whole lot more functional than the phone in the video at the bottom.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-E2121B-Black-unlocked-mobile/dp/B004S62YO2/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1366044978&sr=1-3&keywords=samsung+phone" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-E2121B-Black-unlocked-mobile...</a>
Couple this trend with the progress being made in 3d printers (eg, recent developments in 'printing' simple circuits and electronics) and one can easily see that the low-end consumer electronics market segment is due for a paradigm shift (cliche intended!).<p>Once consumer-grade 3d printers are ubiquitous, it would truly spell the end for brick and mortar retail for 'simple electronics,' since even printing out a cheap demo model at home will be much more cost effective than hopping in your SUV and guzzling a few $7 gallons to pick up a spatula with a built in thermometer.<p>Plus, we may see a resurgence in 'illicit' devices such as blue boxes back from the phreaking days. Some ne'er-do-wells will populate Thingiverse with designs for devices we could only dream of back in our mischievous youths and that could never be sold in a retail establishment.
This isn't a trend because it's not sustainable. The only reason these are cheap is because China artificially lowers their currency related to dollar, but with increasing pollution and social pressure, it's clear this can't go on forever.
A key factor will be disassociating highly personal information & configuration from the hardware. One subversive marketing point of the iPad/iPhone is how it ties so tight to a single user. With something disposable, cloud integration will become important, making the hardware fungible to the user.