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Hi ~kudzu,
I think there is still technology that is highly durable. You just have to pay more for it. What has survived from the 1970's to today are not the cheap full-plastic cameras, it's the expensive made-for-professionals cameras like the Canon F1 that have survived. (I have used an Canon A1 for 2 decades)
I have just recently trashed a Laser-Printer, that in itself would still have worked (probably). But I started to have difficulty to find original toner cartridges. So I had to use knock-off ones from ebay. After 2-3 years I came across a set that had such bad quality that toner spilled everywhere and the transfer drum actually irreversibly damaged. I used that printer approx 15 years in total. It was still very good in printing black&white. I had decided to go with a professional grade laser printer after I had multiple ink printers for home use, of which the most broke even after one change of the cartridges. I willingly paid way more than I needed, knowing it would be cheaper in the long run. Just before tossing the laser printer I printed a status page. The Laser-Printer had barely printed around 5000 pages. That device was build for volumes much much larger (20k/year 100k/lifetime).
In my late 20s I made the concious decision to not buy cheap devices anymore. I buy the more expensive professional grade devices. Sometimes they lack a feature or two. Most of the time they are larger and heavier. But they always survive much much longer.
One thing that I cannot change are smartphones. There is only one quality ("mainstream"). There are "rugged" phones but those are for special use-case, not really suitable for my home and office only lifestyle. I don't go on construction sites or into underground mining facilities. I don't need a rugged durable smartphone. I live with the necessity to buy a new phone every 2-3 years.
~bartender; a scotch please. To all the fine engineers that actually do create durable devices.