Just thinking of the literal mountains of ewaste gives me goosebumps.
Yes, we are currently generating way beyond ridiculous levels of waste, electronic and beyond: we throw away globally 1.4 billion tons of food per year [3] in a world with 822 million people suffering from undernourishment [4]. If we are this bad with something as vital as food, of course we are worse with devices.
[1] (2017) Average U.S. household now has 7 screens, report finds https://www.fiercevideo.com/cable/average-u-s-household-now-...
[2] (2019) U.S. Households Have an Average of 11 Connected Devices — And 5G Should Push That Even Higher https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/u-s-households-have-an...
[3] https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america
[4] https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty...
With 123 million households in the US, the mean spending on laptops, desktops and tablets together is $350/year per household.
Smartphone sales were $74 billion [4] or $600/household/year.
That's a total of $950/year, per household.
The average American household isn't spending $11,000+ every 2 years.
[1] https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/consumer-electronics/co... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/722371/united-states-des... [3] https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/consumer-electronics/co... [4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191985/sales-of-smartpho...
"Apple generated $365 billion revenue in 2021, 52% came from iPhone sales" [1] Taking Apple as example, those billions have to come from someone. The greater point was that instead of having the billions try to make every single device the most powerful CPU/GPU of the current Moore's Law peak, because no one wants a slow device, you might just as well have a bare glass able to render pixels computed on a remote powerful machine, but that machine must be owned by the user. And you don't stream an app, a browser, you stream an entire OS, on the spot, on request.
My oldest (working) devices are already all closing in on or past a decade. This metric is flawed in many ways...
[1] https://www.cnet.com/culture/study-u-s-adults-spend-1200-a-y...
[2] The average US family size is 2.51 [3] while average worldwide is 4.9 [4]
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h...
[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/31/with-billio...
Most people make a 1k$ purchase last decades. Enthusiasts may be dropping 5-10k$ but not your average joe.
In 2005 the average size of a TV was 30 inches. Two decades ago a TV had no HDMI, and it only received analog NTSC or PAL.
A phone was 2G - 3G was the thing about to be but mostly not there yet. One decade ago the iPhone 5 was released.
An Apple iBook cost $1200 with 128MB of ram and a PPC processor: https://apple-history.com/ibook_mid_2002
Maybe a stereo is usable - although for midrange equipment the capacitors have probably dried out and you certainly won't be getting digital FM.
You would need to be very poor if you can't get working hand-me-downs from a decade ago.
People do it with cars (even if they're not leasing, which is explicitly doing it).
