The Economics of Transience

Written Circa June, 2003 - inspired by a chapter in Alvin Toffler's 'The Third Wave' 

In the past permanence was ideal. Whether in handcrafting a pair of Boots or in constructing a cathedral all man’s creative and productive energies went towards maximizing the durability of the product. Man built to last. He had to. As long as the society around him was relatively unchanging each object had clearly defined functions and the economic logic dictated the policy of permanence. Even if they had to be repaired now and then, the boots that costed $50.00 and lasted ten years were less expensive than those that cost $10.00 and lasted only a year. As the general rate of change in society accelerates, however, the economics of permanence are - and must be - replaced by economics of transience.

First, advancing technology tends to lower the costs of manufacture much more rapidly than the costs of repair work. The one is automated the other remains largely handcrafted operation. This means that it often becomes cheaper to replace than to repair. It is economically sensible to build cheap unrepairable throwaway objects even though they may not last as long as repairable objects.

Second, advancing technology makes it possible to improve the object as time goes by. The second-generation computer is better than the first and third is better than the second. Since we can anticipate further technological advance more improvements coming at even shorter intervals, it often makes hard economic sense to plan for the short term rather than the long.

Third, as change accelerates and reaches into more and more remote corners of the society, uncertainty about the future needs increases. Recognizing the inevitability of change but unsure as to the demands it may impose on us we hesitate to commit large resources for the rigidly fixed objects intended to serve unchanging purposes. Avoiding commitment to fixed forms and functions we attempt to make the product itself adaptable. We ‘play it cool’ technologically.

The rise of disposability - the spread of throwaway culture - is a response to the powerful pressures of automation, faster innovation and change or laconically Super-industrialism. As change accelerates and complexities multiply we can expect to see further extensions of the principle of disposability, further curtailment of the man’s relationships with things.

Geographic mobility is another dimension of transience. 

An England architect, Cedric Price has designed what he calls a ‘think belt’ – an entire mobile university intended to serve 20,000 students in North Staffordshire. “It will”, he says, “rely on temporary buildings rather than permanent ones and will make good use of mobile and variable physical enclosures, classrooms, for example built inside railway carriages so that they may be shunted anywhere on the four mile campus.”

Every Friday afternoon at 4:30 a tall graying Wall Street executive named Bruce Robe stuffs a mass of papers into a black leather briefcase takes his coat off the rack outside his office and departs. He has been doing this for the past 33 years. First he rides elevator 29 floors down to the street level. Next he strides for ten minutes through the crowded streets of Wall Street and boards a helicopter that deposits him at the John F. Kennedy Airport. Transferring into a Trans-world Airlines jet he settles down for supper and then banks and heads west. 1 hour 10 minutes later he steps briskly through the terminal building at the Airport in Columbus Ohio and enters the car waiting for him. In 30 more minutes he reaches this nation: he is home. 

On another level are students attending colleges away from their home state plus the hundreds of thousands more away from home but still within their home state. For millions and particularly for ‘the people of future’ home is where you find it. This is in addition to the large groups of professionals, technicians and executives who engage in a constant round of ‘musical homes’. A British trade union official R. Clark not long ago told an international manpower conference that mobility might be a habit formed in student days. He pointed out that those who spend their college years away from home moved in less restrictive circles than uneducated and more homebound manual workers.

Further as communication technology improves, it becomes easier and easier to contact people across geographical boundaries. This too, has significant effect on marking the death of distance. And take me for example. I [used to] study at a college, in a town, which is away from home. If it takes some fourteen hours by train to travel from my hometown to my college-town. But during holidays when I move from the college to home, I can still maintain contact with my college friends using the phone. Since one of my friends has a mobile phone it costs me as much to call him from my hometown as it would when staying in college. Then Internet helps me to exchange loads of data including study material with my friends. So except for missing some of the campus activity I can enjoy everything sitting right there in my hometown.

The concept of ‘death of distance’ goes parallel with the concept of globalization. As more and more people become cosmopolitans, the thought of ‘The global Village’ seems more and more real, becoming the loudest expression of Transience.

#Ref: http://books.google.com/books?id=ViRmAAAAIAAJ&dq=The+third+wave&ei=1a1hSZX8H6KIyATOqu3vBQ&pgis=1

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Addendum: 

I today work in a town (Mumbai) which is different from my hometown (Bhopal); my parents too had to move to another town off late (Vadodara) due to my father's job and my brother has already shifted across 3 cities as he is about to start his career with the Indian Army. 

Alvin Toffler's thoughts and my echo of them (written above) could not have been more true.