東西的故事/Story of Stuff

「東西的故事」是一部關於產品生產製造過程與自然環境關係的影片。會接觸這個影片，主要是因為這學期我擔任教學助教的課程老闆，對於永續經濟有非常大的熱忱。開學頭幾堂課都是在討論企業的社會責任，也因此讓我有機會接觸更多資訊。

影長度大約20分鐘，非常適合在課堂上播放。其中有幾個觀點挺有趣的：在講到消費經濟的發展歷史時，我很驚訝得知1950年代的經濟發展目標就是為了刺激消費。而在刺激消費的經濟發展之下，人們的價值定位於是取決於消費能力，聽起來還真是令人傷心。而計劃過時曾經被公開討論也讓我感到不可思議。另外，影片裡說廣告只是讓我們對於目前擁有的感到不滿意，或許不完全同意這樣的評語，但仔細想想，似乎也不能否認呢。

Story of Stuff is a video about the relationships between production process and the environment.  This semester the instructor of the course that I work for has a great passion about sustainability.  The first few classes of this semester were discussing the corporate social responsibility.  Hence I got the opportunity to know more about sustainability.

The length of this video is about 20 minutes.  A short film that is suitable for sharing with students.  Some points in the film are quite interesting.  First of all, I was surprised to know that the goal of economic development in 1950s was to consume.  Under the consumption economy, the value of a person depends oh how much he consumes.  That sounds really sad.  The other thing that surprised me is the public discussion of planned obsolescence.  I know stuff are designed to last shorter than before, and I always thought that it was a public secret in business.  But no.  Designers were discussing it publicly.  Finally, in this film it said that advertisements just make us unsatisfied with what we have now.  This is an very interesting comment.  I concur that each advertisement has different marketing goal.  But when you really look into the fundamental message of most advertisements, the comment seems to be quite true.