'You feel chilled because you have no character. You're a depressing assemblage of pop culture influences and cancelled emotions, driven by the sputtering engine of only the most banal form of capitalism. You spend your life feeling as if you're perpetually on the brink of being obsolete - whether it's labour market obsolescence or cultural unhipness. And it's all catching up with you. You live and die by the development cycle. You're glamorized drosophila flies, with the company regulating your life cycles at whim. If it isn't a budget-driven eighteen-month game production schedule, it's a five-year hardware obsolescence schedule. Every five years you have to throw away everything you know and learn a whole new set of hardware and software specs, relegating what was once critical to our lives to the cosmic slag heap.'
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Modern life cycles force constant obsolescence, reducing humans to market products.
- In plain terms
- Companies treat people like gadgets that must always be new.
- What can you take from it?
- Resist defining yourself by product cycles.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What makes you obsolete?
- How do you measure value?
Another view
Adaptation to change is often necessary for survival.
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