CAS 283 Lab, Section 004
9/12/2014
Obsolete Technology/E-Waste
Atari Landfill
In our lab last week we talked about obsolete technology and e-waste that pollutes other countries around the world. E-waste is discarded pieces of hardware that consumers do not want anymore, and end up causing pollution when they are broken down or recycled. Obsolete technology is tech that is no longer useful or has been replaced by a "superior" product; thus, this can/does ultimately lead to e-waste. Personally, when I heard "e-waste", my brain immediately went to the videogame crash of 1983.
From 1983 to 1985 the videogame industry in North America had their preverbal bubble burst. There were a lot of factors that went into the drop in sales from $3.2 billion in 1983 to $100 million in 1985, but the most important thing that happened was how the company Atari reacted to the whole situation. One of the main causes for the crash was video game titles having inflated projections of sales; moreover, the tie in video game to the movie ET holds a place on most videogame aficionados lists of worst videogames of all time. This crash lead to Atari making a landfill in New Mexico to bury all of their e-waste.
Initially spokesmen for Atari said that the landfill was only made to get rid of malfunctioning consoles and cartridges (including 700,000 copies of the E.T. video game), but the truth was that Atari was getting rid of inventory they could not move because of the before mentioned videogame crash. The cartridges and old Atari 2600s had become obsolete because there was no demand for them. Instead of recycling the materials, Atari dug a hole, filled it with e-waste, then put a concrete slab over it. This is by far not the worst instance of e-waste in recent history, but I think it is significant that back in the mid to early 80s computer companies could just decide to dump all of their "bad" or obsolete merchandise wherever they could.
Super interesting, and nice job introducing new information for the blog post.
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