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Comment by avgcorrection | Hacker News Reader

> Google and other tech companies should continue to find ways to stop the disposability treadmill that pressures us to replace our phones and laptops in favor of newer models. With e-waste the fastest growing waste-stream in the U.S., it’s not sustainable to consume technology at this rate. This is a meaningful step toward a tech industry making products designed to last.

Uh-huh. Alternatively you could go back to books, pencil and paper.

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I am really heartbroken by your response, I always feel the world/society should fight planned obsolescence. people/planet over profits. and then I see a person responding with a joke (I hope you don't mean it) when we(society) have means to make products last but some corporation chose profits against it and then greenwash with 5min mother earth videos. I know you are aware/heard of planned obsolescence. some people complain, these corporations have to maintain and it costs them, but those people don't realise We are gifted with wonderful opensource community like (pixelexperience os maintainers). These corporation can design it to make it easy for opensource community to maintain it after EOL.

Since you are here in HN, there is high probability you are one of the geeks in industry. I hope you fight for "planet/people over profits".

>I am really heartbroken by your response, I always feel the world/society should fight planned obsolescence.

alternative explanation - they feel there is overuse of computing devices and that one could really go back to pencil and paper for lots of tasks.

‘Uh-huh’ changes that context and makes it sarcastic.

Uh-huh. That's about twenty extra steps compared to going back to books, pencil and paper.

yeah, that might be true, with all that's going on the news,my first thought was that the commenter is linking planned obsolescence with technology progress (sarcastically). Thanks for the perspective. There are days when I felt the urge to forgo the computing and go back 5 years when world is hopeful and not overwhelmed with computing

I have many of my old notebooks that I wrote in as a child. The amount of paper and ink I used was a lot. Multiply that times all the children and you see how much paper is used vs. typing on a computer.

Sometimes the technology route is better, now what we need to do is make it more sustainable.

There's a lot more resources that go into 1g of computing devices than 1g of paper and writing utensils. Several orders of magnitude more.

Better to mine some cobalt than to cut down some trees eh. (This time I'm being sarcastic.)

You have to either be very young or be very LCD-brained if you think advocating for simple, effective, time-tested teaching methods must necessarily be sarcastic.

Yeah! We should keep kids away from technology that has reached 100% saturation in all other parts of society. Schools, as places for learning, definitely shouldn't integrate tech into teaching-- after all, school is definitely only about teaching outmoded skills and not about preparing children to integrate with society.

The old way wasn't broken so why fix it, after all.

Exactly. School is about teaching and books+pen+paper is perfectly adequate for most things that they teach in elementary school.

What do you even lose by not having a laptop per child? Most of us suck at using software. Well, correction: most software sucks to use. And when has someone like an elementary teacher made a child better at using a computer..? It feels like a joke just asking that question.

And unless Bret Victor (or someone like him) has revolutionized digital teaching I'll bet that modern digital teaching is not categorically differen than the old ways (pdfs?).

Yikes.

> Most of us suck at using software.

It's so weird to me that you'd use this as logic for NOT teaching tech in schools.

If only there were some mechanism society had to convey knowledge about how to interact with society and common, everyday things, like some sort of centralized location you can go to where you're given the opportunity to gather and explore new information. Ideally, we'd work this concept into society in a way that the younger generation would gain these skills as soon as possible in their lives, and we'd put effort into making sure the individuals conveying that information possessed the skills they are teaching (again, through some sort of societal mechanism to instill basic knowledge)

Can you think of something like that?

By obliquely and sarcastically referring to the teaching institution you have convinced me. Well played.

> > And when has someone like an elementary teacher made a child better at using a computer..? It feels like a joke just asking that question.

> > > And when has someone like an elementary teacher made a child better at using a computer..? It feels like a joke just asking that question.

You're quoting this again as if it isn't critically damning to the position you're trying to convey. As though you actually believe the existence of ignorance is a logical excuse to continue perpetuating ignorance.

If only some facility had existed in that elementary school teacher's life that had instilled those skills in a way that it wouldn't be a joke?

I don't know, maybe like some sort of centralized institution where you can go to gain knowledge about basic concepts you might encounter when interacting with society. Some sort of... societal mechanism for ensuring people are competent enough to interact with their world.

Can you think of something like that?

> By obliquely and sarcastically referring to the teaching institution you have convinced me. Well played.

Well, having it stated plainly for you clearly hasn't done the trick. Sometimes different approaches are needed!

Like most schools around the world still do today.

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