AirPods and the earth: Digital technologies, planned obsolescence and the Capitalocene

Abstract

Apple's AirPods have helped forge a multibillion-dollar market for true wireless hearable devices. The article employs media geology and political ecology to argue that AirPods exemplify the Capitalocene, a time where a planetary sociotechnical system based on ecologically unequal exchange benefits a privileged minority of humans while inflicting significant harms to humans and ecosystems that will persist across inhuman temporalities. These harms are inequitably distributed and are not typically experienced by those who can afford luxury items such as AirPods. While digital technologies are often mistaken for dematerialised objects that will enable infinite economic growth on a materially finite planet, examining the flows of energy, matter, labour and knowledge required for the production and maintenance of these devices comprehensively refutes these claims. AirPods are designed to function for just eighteen to thirty-six months of daily use before planned obsolescence renders AirPods as long-lived, toxic, electronic waste. Pending ‘right to repair’ legislation should prohibit the production of irreparable digital devices such as AirPods, as the right to repair an irreparable device is effectively meaningless.