California’s Unplanned Obsolescence

Commentary In the midst of my annual spring-cleaning regimen, I came across a cardboard box of old charging cables and adapters taking up scarce space in my garage. Cords of various sizes from computers, printers, cell phones, televisions, and other devices I’ve discarded over the years, were all clumped together, kept for the remote chance that I may need them again. No doubt, each of those had a distinct purpose for the device I was using at the time, but none of them seemed to match future iterations of the same product. Technology is ever-improving and as such, most of these cables were simply updated, universalized, or made to be obsolete....