Objects in Flux - RMIT Research Repository - RMIT University

Objects in Flux
[Figure 6-3]
Circuit diagram attched to the rear of
a 1980s JVC television, photo 2005.
Image is author’s own.
110
within the consumer’s hands. While automobile
use emerged as a contested domain, it was not
a level playing field. Through the deployment
of control mechanisms manufactures positioned
the automobile in line with their commercial
models and established divergent use as deviant
or disruptive to the ‘proper’ functioning of the
automobile.
Shifting our focus to the present day it is possible
to discern a sixth control mechanism
operating within contemporary society, that is, the control of information.
Through carefully structuring the information made available to
consumers, manufacturers are able to limit consumer behavior to a set
of documented and authorized paths. Within recent years this form of
control has become particularly prominent.
Until quite recently the television in my lounge room was a JVC
model 7865AU built in the 1980s. Attached to the back of the television,
housed inside a small plastic pouch, was a circuit diagram
documenting the television’s inner workings. This documentation was
intended to provide repair technicians with all the necessary information
required for diagnosis and repair of the unit. Here the object
and the technical description of the object are given together. The
television, adrift in the world, carried with it information on its own
construction. This information gave the object an independence from
its place of production. Such an approach was once common practice:
the underside of the BeoCenter 4500 used in the B&O MP3 Mac Mod
was printed with detailed diagnosis and repair information; likewise,
the first personal computers from Apple Computer Inc., the Apple 1
released in 1976 and the Apple II released in 1978, shipped with technical
descriptions of the systems’ processors and circuit designs. In the
30 years since, the practice of providing detailed technical documentation
has gone from commonplace to virtually non-existent. Instead
of circuit information attached to the rear of a modern device you are
now far more likely to find a sticker stating, ‘no user-serviceable parts
inside’. The products of late capitalist society are no longer adrift in
the world; they are tethered to their manufacturers through a physical
dependency based on information control.