Made to Break (Ch. 4-6)

Slade’s following chapters continue the extreme discussion of technological obsolescence in America. However, unlike the first three chapters, Chapter four begins with the introduction of a bitter rivalry that lasted for decades, or rather through a series of advancements in a particular field. The first competitor, David Sarnoff, was describes a business genius who saw the strategy in planned obsolesce and took advantage of it with attempts to introduce RCA and Television into the world. The second competitor was Edwin Howard Armstrong who never left the foundation of FM radio only to make it a stronger piece of communications technology.
Slade describes the movement of different sectors of market share and their how they went up and down at the times they did. The strategy that Sarnoff represented was to short live the time of FM radio and quickly destroy it with the introduction of television. However, Armstrong saw the potential greatness that FM radio had to offer and worked on perfecting it for the remainder of his life. The eventual excitement of TV made consumers excited and curious about the new product, but further penetration of FM radio continued to make record achievements in the world of wireless communications. After a series of legal battles between Sarnoff and Armstrong, the bitter rivalry that was once seen as mutual respect began to loose all integrity as time wore on. Once betrayed, Armstrong slowly regained power and authority of the communications world and as RCA began to bow down to the FCC, Armstrong “deliberately wanted to prevent Sarnoff from being able to manufacture FM radios and transmitters…His personal motive may have been to punish Sarnoff and RCA.” (Pg. 96)
Isn’t it interesting to view the corporate innovations of yesterday, and how their rivalry drove the technology of today? How did the TVs and radios that we use right now become the result of an epic legal battle of these two parties? I still find it fascinating how the ideas of obsolesce can be used as such a powerful tool in the hands of business mastermind. One can literally predict the market (hopefully correctly) for years to come.
While exciting, it was very sad to read about how such a battle between the two eventually lead to the tragic death of Howard Armstrong. Throughout the chapter, I really was rooting for Armstrong in the end just because I felt that he deserved the recognition after all the bullying over his patents and inventions.
Interesting how Slade discusses the silk trade movement in Asia. Till this point in the book, he has discussed obsolescence in a sense of technology. But the beginning of chapter 5 was a discussion of the obsolescence of silk. How synthetic substitutes made the market for silk slightly smaller and more elastic. Slade made it clear that “although it had not yet been invented, artificial silk was clearly the fabric of the future.” (Pg. 118).
In the beginning of the book, I didn’t really understand the meaning of the title, “Made to Break” but as I read on, I am beginning to understand what Slade means by this. He literally means that pieces of technology are made to be broken in order make room for new devices in the future.