Gadgets are mostly just a battery, a computer, and an IO device.
With the battery and charging made reliable, the computer already near indestructible, and the plastic case pretty low-resource-use, all that can fail is the IO device, and if you're gonna replace that, it's not much better than a whole new device, since the rest is an empty box with a tiny PCB.
Real repairability would be nice, and we really need replaceable flash memory on phonelike stuff, but I think we're on the right track.
A bigger issue is the same problem with furniture: the devices don't wear out, but a better one comes out. This could be mostly solved with OTA firmware updates in everything, since modern devices have close to perfected the IO device.
I think the star trek utopia solution would be a set of standardized gadget modules. Then things could be fixed the same way we fixed stuff in the vacuum tube era.
I think 95% of gadgets ever made, from guitar tuners to washing machines, could have all the electronics replaced with one universal common standard board and one of a set of maybe 15 or so different modules.
Having spares of all of them would let you fix anything in minutes, for probably only a few extra dollars per product.
Of course it would do nothing to solve mechanical failures which in my experience are like, 10 or 20 times more common, but it would allow upgrading electronics for new features.
Those weren't holding us back. What stops the tech companies from releasing a new model every year?
260 million disposable vapes
30 million LED, solar and decorative lights
26 million cables
10 million USB sticks
7 million cordless headphones
Maybe USB-C helps with the cables, I’m guessing many of those are failed cables though. In any case, I don’t think it will address disposable vapes or decorative lights.
Anyway, I dispute the 95% of gadgets number. I don’t think we can be too surprised disposable vapes ended up in the trash.
Maybe it's the reduced sense of commitment. If you buy a reusable you're saying "Yep, I'm gonna be vaping long enough to justify this" and that might not be a nice thought for many users.
IMHO, the answer should be "crack down on disposable, unfixable, ephemeral gadgets" and quality decline in general. There are all kinds of apologetics defending disposablity and lack of repair-ability, but it's all bullshit to justify the enshittified status quo.
Appliances should be designed to last 25 years. Even if that means the up-front cost is more expensive, it's better for everyone except appliance salesmen than buying 5 appliances that only last 5 years each. Large manufactures should be required to provide a stable supply of repair parts. Any tech that can be made reusable should be made reusable. And I'm personally fine with an unwieldy government bureaucracy to bully our fine corporations and their executives into compliance. They've shown they need it.
enter ebikes, stage right
I really dislike owning a dozen products that have the same damn rechargable lithium cells inside that I cannot move batteries between in any realistic or practical fashion. Even laptops and Teslas used to use 18650s! It's infuriating that there is zero incentive for companies to develop any kind of modular interoperable rechargeable battery under our current economic system, leaving us with only the trite solution of "just don't buy any modern electronic device, then".