Future Runoff: Difference between revisions
Caseorganic (talk | contribs) Created page with 'Simple example: a glow stick at a concert costs $5, but loses value outside of the context.' |
Caseorganic (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| (7 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown) | |||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
===Definition=== | |||
Future runoff is a term used to describe the propensity of an object to lose value outside of a certain context or situation. For example, a glow stick at a concert costs $5, but has a $2 value outside post-event. The contextual value of the glow stick is high, but its inherent value is quite low. Similarly, items which once had value in a certain time period (the newest model of a mobile phone or new vehicle, for instance) may have no value in only a few years. Depreciating value is a result of quickly developing object-based economies. Future runoff may result in unintentional planned obsolescence, especially when a product is produced by a team of developers with high hopes for a software's longevity. | |||
===Two Kinds of Runoff=== | |||
'''Contextual''': value that exists only inside a bounded situation and evaporates when the situation ends. The glow stick is the clean case, but the pattern is everywhere — the conference lanyard, the festival wristband, the branded tote, the souvenir program. These objects are not defective outside their context; they are simply meaningless there, because their value was never a property of the object but of the event that licensed it. | |||
'''Temporal''': value that decays as the surrounding technical environment moves on. A phone three generations old still works, but the applications it can run, the networks it can join and the accessories it can use have all changed around it. Nothing about the device broke. The environment revoked its usefulness. | |||
===Runoff Without Intent=== | |||
The final clause of the definition is the more consequential one. Planned obsolescence — the deliberate shortening of a product's life — is well documented and widely criticized. Future runoff describes a version that no one plans. | |||
A team building software makes hundreds of small commitments to its moment: a framework, an API it calls, an authentication method, a screen size, a network assumption, a business relationship with a service it depends on. Each is reasonable when made. Collectively, they constitute an expiry date that no one wrote down and that everyone would deny intending. The product's life is bounded by the shortest-lived of its dependencies. This is why software written with high hopes for longevity often ages worse than software written with none: ambition adds dependencies. | |||
The same effect appears in hardware whose value sits in a service. A device that requires a company's servers is only as durable as that company's interest in maintaining them, and the number of functioning objects rendered inert by a discontinued service is now large enough to have produced its own repair and preservation movements. | |||
===Consequences=== | |||
* '''Depreciation curves steepen.''' The gap between the price of a new device and the resale price of a one-year-old device is a direct measurement of runoff. | |||
* '''Hand-me-ups.''' Objects that have run off for their first owner are frequently still adequate for a second, which is the mechanism behind [[Hand Me Up Technology|hand-me-up technology]]. | |||
* '''Waste.''' Runoff is the economic description of a flow that appears physically as electronic waste — objects discarded while still functional. | |||
* '''Design response.''' Designing against runoff means reducing dependency: local function before network function, open formats, documented protocols, and the assumption that the company will not be there. | |||
===Related Reading=== | |||
* [[Hand Me Up Technology]] | |||
* [[Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty]] | |||
* [[Materials]] | |||
* [[Senseable City Lab]] | |||
[[Category:Book Pages]] | |||
[[Category:Finished]] | |||
Latest revision as of 13:00, 25 August 2026
Definition
Future runoff is a term used to describe the propensity of an object to lose value outside of a certain context or situation. For example, a glow stick at a concert costs $5, but has a $2 value outside post-event. The contextual value of the glow stick is high, but its inherent value is quite low. Similarly, items which once had value in a certain time period (the newest model of a mobile phone or new vehicle, for instance) may have no value in only a few years. Depreciating value is a result of quickly developing object-based economies. Future runoff may result in unintentional planned obsolescence, especially when a product is produced by a team of developers with high hopes for a software's longevity.
Two Kinds of Runoff
Contextual: value that exists only inside a bounded situation and evaporates when the situation ends. The glow stick is the clean case, but the pattern is everywhere — the conference lanyard, the festival wristband, the branded tote, the souvenir program. These objects are not defective outside their context; they are simply meaningless there, because their value was never a property of the object but of the event that licensed it.
Temporal: value that decays as the surrounding technical environment moves on. A phone three generations old still works, but the applications it can run, the networks it can join and the accessories it can use have all changed around it. Nothing about the device broke. The environment revoked its usefulness.
Runoff Without Intent
The final clause of the definition is the more consequential one. Planned obsolescence — the deliberate shortening of a product's life — is well documented and widely criticized. Future runoff describes a version that no one plans.
A team building software makes hundreds of small commitments to its moment: a framework, an API it calls, an authentication method, a screen size, a network assumption, a business relationship with a service it depends on. Each is reasonable when made. Collectively, they constitute an expiry date that no one wrote down and that everyone would deny intending. The product's life is bounded by the shortest-lived of its dependencies. This is why software written with high hopes for longevity often ages worse than software written with none: ambition adds dependencies.
The same effect appears in hardware whose value sits in a service. A device that requires a company's servers is only as durable as that company's interest in maintaining them, and the number of functioning objects rendered inert by a discontinued service is now large enough to have produced its own repair and preservation movements.
Consequences
- Depreciation curves steepen. The gap between the price of a new device and the resale price of a one-year-old device is a direct measurement of runoff.
- Hand-me-ups. Objects that have run off for their first owner are frequently still adequate for a second, which is the mechanism behind hand-me-up technology.
- Waste. Runoff is the economic description of a flow that appears physically as electronic waste — objects discarded while still functional.
- Design response. Designing against runoff means reducing dependency: local function before network function, open formats, documented protocols, and the assumption that the company will not be there.
