It's just a bunch of atoms. It was a bunch of atoms before the manufacturers got to it -- mostly goo, some rocks, a bit of sand. They rearranged the atoms into a different order. Then Blend-Tec guy put it into a blender and rearranged the atoms again, now it's dust instead of goo. What has been lost, apart from a bit of irreplacable time out of the lives of everyone involved (including me writing this comment and you reading it)?
Toxic chemicals were used during production of the components, probably leaving waste to be dealt with, toxic gases vented, etc. The components of the computer were made using minerals possibly sourced from conflict-ridden, corrupt places like Congo. Some of the minerals involved may become significantly more scarce in the foreseeable future.
If you're going to incur these (ethically, if not strictly economically) non-trivial externalities of manufacturing an electronic device, the ethical thing to do, it seems to me, is to at least make an effort to use the device as it was intended for a reasonable service life, rather than destroying it in a cheap stunt in a way that renders it unlikely to be recycled in any meaningful way and impossible to cannibalize for working parts.
This is especially so if your company pretends its motto is "Don't be evil".
As for the marketing value for the blender firm: They could always fake it. Put a "No Cr-48 Laptops Were Harmed During Production Of This Advertisement" disclaimer up at the end.
Sure, that would probably reduce interest in later ads, but frankly the whole thing is just played out now. "Wanker posts video of a gadget being destroyed as cheap stunt to draw pageviews. Yawn." They'd probably get some PR for the switch to faking it, then they could bow out of the whole tired thing.
Yes, the notebook was used up for a frivolous purpose. But consider, the vast majority of game consoles are used -- and used up -- for frivolous pruposes, and over their lifetimes, they'll have used more resources (e.g. electricity). Or consider large sporting events that costs lots of money to stage and large amounts of energy for the crowd to get there.
A lot of human resources are used for frivolous purposes. do you want to ban them all?
I think you overestimate the non-frivolity of proper laptop use and life in general.
Beyond providing the bare essentials of survival to yourself or others, you're just playing around. Call it Serious Business if you like, but if you don't need to do it to survive then it's no more important than blending laptops to entertain the internet.
>What has been lost, apart from a bit of irreplacable time out of the lives of everyone involved (including me writing this comment and you reading it)?
Short answer, we've gained entropy. Over time, entropy will be the end of us, and therefore it is our responsibility as lifeforms to hold it back wherever we can. Otherwise what's the point? May as well just give up on the whole spontaneously emergent complexity deal altogether if you're just going to go wrecking up the place.
Entropy is what kills every one of us. Entropy is what makes us "run out" of rare metals. There are a lot of ways for entropy to kill us that don't involve the heat death of the universe.
We can't just spontaneously arrange atoms for free. Turning, say, lead into gold is possible, but consumes a lot of energy for a very small result. Some transformations are effectively "one-way".
It's all nice to say "it's just a bunch of atoms", but some toxic compilations of atoms can't (without more "one-way" transformations to tap the available chemical energy) be easily transformed back into useful combinations.
It's about how useful those atoms are in a certain arrangement. Everything is composed of basic elements and we all know that. That doesn't mean that everything can be instantly devalued by saying "it's just a bunch of atoms!"
If we take a useful arrangement of element and transform it into a useless arrangement without a good reason, what we've done is a net loss for whoever or whatever found the previous arrangement useful. The atoms can't be destroyed, but their immediate utility can.
