this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
1527 points (97.8% liked)
Solarpunk technology
2361 readers
5 users here now
Technology for a Solar-Punk future.
Airships and hydroponic farms...
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
While I see the point they're trying to make, what this person is actually saying is complete nonsense.
Graceful degradation is not the opposite of planned obsolescence they're two completely different concepts with nothing to do with each other.
Graceful degradation is where a product degrades in such a way as to maintain at least some functionality for as long as possible.
Planned obsolescence is where an item is intentionally designed to fail in order to get you to buy the next version.
Completely different concepts.
The actual opposite of graceful degradation, is progressive enhancement.
It hits slightly different though.
For example graceful degradation could be considered when a device can have different components fail but the rest still work.
Progressive enhancement can be considered to be a device with basic functionality with optional add-ons.
It's basically about the base getting less functional, versus the baseline being upgraded. From a certain point of view they are the same thing but realistically they're not.
If I have a device with an optional add-on and I don't actually have that add-on installed, I wouldn't say the device is "degraded", even though technologically it probably doesn't make much difference.
As opposed to progressive enhancement as the product ages (features added with firmware updates etc.)