- Max Popov
- Long-Term Prospects
- Opening Reception 6pm to 8pm 2/10/2023
- 337 NY-295 Chatham, NY, 12037
- Head is two steps behind my body– necessarily!
It continually lags behind!
Ah annoyance!
Where is the sunset? I will be off… The lights are on … everything is light in my house … quickly one must be off …
- -Aleksi Krucheykh, “Victory over the Sun”, 1913, translation by Ewa Bartos and Victoria Nes Kirby
- A quick note on a well-known manifestation of planned obsolescence: In 1924, an alliance of global corporations
involved
in the lighting industry convened to implement an artificial limitation on the pliable life of incandescent
lightbulbs.
At the time, incandescants operated at a local maximum of about 2500 hours. The parties agreed to systematize
production
of bulbs with a reduced life-span, a settlement reached under the name of ‘1000 hour life committee.’ The Convention
for
the Development and Progress of the International Incandescent Electric Lamp Industry, long-drawn, foreshortened the
artifice in the name to the epithet Phoebus.
- On January 1, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy initiated full enforcement of any non-compliance in the production
of
general service lamps, including a ban of any manufactured light producing under 45 lumens per watt. Most
incandescents
fall below this limit and can no longer be manufactured or imported. More sustainable and efficient sources of
illumination like CFLs and LEDs are now standard. Perhaps suprising, Monsanto is credited for expanding LEDs into
global
markets. Just over 50 years ago the agrochemical company grew the gallium arsenic phosphide manufacturers needed for
the
semiconductor. A few years later, realizing greater value, Monsanto pursued a tangent into their own production of
optoelectronics— digital displays, calculators, wristwatches… after dominating the market, they sold the division in
1979.
- A good long-term prospect, then. 1924 to 2023. A near-100-year accumulation of an effort to edge closer and closer
to a
global maximum of 100% – efficiency, sustainability, performance, net zero… profits notwithstanding. Recently, a
solar
panel was developed that has a 32% chance of producing 2 electrons from a single photon. With a ‘machine efficiency’
of
132%, the definition of efficiency expands and suddenly the global maximum becomes unclear. A typical LED burns for
50000 hours (5.7 years), but a carbon filament bulb has been working in a fire station in California since 1901.
Predetermined use-value is bucked.
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