Made to Break pt 2

As we continue down the technological history of our country, there are constantly more examples of the trend towards increasing wastefulness. In the early years of the radio, companies were pushing inventors with large amounts of funding to develop competing technology to earn market share. RCA’s Head David Sarnoff was pushing the invention of TV and TV broadcasting in order to make radio broadcasting obsolete.

            David Sarnoff is a perfect example of corporations using obsolescence as a technique to keep consumer demand and create multiple sales from customers. “…with the power to stifle competition in manufacture and sale of receiving sets” (8). This also increases the importance of brand name because satisfaction and innovation drives returning buyers.

            Sarnoff’s plan hit a curb when two inventions revolutionized the radio. The transistor replaced vacuum tubes and made it possible to make radios extremely small and versatile. Also, an engineer named Edwin Howard Armstrong invented the FM radio. “FM’s clarity, capture effect, and energy efficiency made it much more suitable to mobile radio than AM” (9). When Armstrong tried to present this to Sarnoff, he slowly put it off in attempt to keep it from hitting the market. Armstrong shortly caught on and decided to create his own company and began to sell licenses for the FM radio.

            The moderating force between Sarnoff and Armstrong’s battle was the FCC. The FCC moderated the airwaves and determined which frequencies could be used for FM and which ones could be used for TV. These presets limited the growth of FM stations and ensured that TV had enough space to grow. Because of the limits on FM, it could not overtake AM and instead they coexist.

“Advanced capitalism had regularly stifled or swallowed up the individual entrepreneur during these years when the political will to enforce legislation against monopolistic practices were the exception rather than the rule.” (97)

The lesson we can learn from this case is that even though the corporate world will always move towards creating monopolies and will use obsolescence as a tool to increase revenues, the government can create forces which will limit this to some extent. Although Armstrong tried to use FM to make AM obsolete, now both exist and share the market. As long as we keep our governments intentions separate of cooperations, and towards the rights of the consumer we can limit the amount of waste we create.