While there are plenty of instances in which quality is shaved through technology for business reasons counter to engineering values, I have to (gasp!) support Tom's point that there are many things that simply wouldn't be feasible without clever application of digital and other technology. The tradeoff is usually maintainability versus manufacturability..."no user serviceable parts within".

Example from my personal experience: At the dawn of my career I worked in a disk-drive refurbishment center. Circa 1973, that meant 20 megabyte drives the size of commercial washing machines, and costing tens of thousands of bucks each. Most of the cost was in the precision manufacturing required to float the heads a micron above the platter surface, and to position the carriage holding the read/write heads over the platter to access the requested track.

20 megs then cost decakilobucks, a terabyte today costs a couple of hundred. It's all due to not trying to manufacture physical mechanisms to the tolerances you need to store info in magnetic domains at that density, and instead using cheap position sensors with digital feedback coupled to cheap actuators to dynamically position a relatively crude hunk of aluminum with a precision comparable to the wavelength of light. Who cares about machining tolerance when ya got digital feedback loops?

Disk drives and automobiles...the same good engineering reasons lie behind replacing "... a cam and spring in some mechanical feedback loop and adjusting it with simple tools so it runs right..." with "...a computer chip that does the same job but that can be plugged in by a robot." Part of the reason's the cost savings of robot labor, true, but the other part is genuine engineering that produces something better at a lower cost.

I'm not disagreeing with your basic thesis. I think technology's best used to go beyond the limits of current craftsmanship and skill, but poorly used when it's deployed simply to shave costs to the detriment of the customer or of society. Sometimes there are no user serviceable parts within for a good reason, and sometimes, you're right, it's a tactic to squeeze more money out of the consumer by increasing the total cost of ownership. Razors and razor blades--it's not new or particularly high-tech. Or, as is often the case, it's done to enhance profit by slashing manufacturing labor costs, and in accordance with the perceived wisdom of Adam Smith, letting somebody else worry about where your customer base which includes your former employees will find the money to buy your product at any price.

And hey, what about those voicemail systems? If ever there was a pathological use of technology by the suits simply to enhance profits, that would be it. All its victims (consumers) hate it, but because all the suits are using it, there is zero negative feedback allowed from the marketplace. If you want to beat up a technology for lowering the quality of life, that's should be near the top of the list.

Or any technology devoted to advertising. I have about a terabyte stored up on the perniciious effects of it, so it's probably best not to go there right now. It pierces me through the heart to see the Web corrupted by advertising in a way that will cripple its ability to realize its full potential...just as advertising destroyed any possibility of television becoming an instrument of education and uplift and turned it into a "vast wasteland".

The suits have a lot to answer for.