I've been taking things apart and fixing things since I was a kid. It has been motivated by a mix of economics, curiosity, and desire for a sense of agency among my things. Over the years it has become increasingly clear that: some things are designed to outright fail, many things are designed to be discarded and replaced, and most things are designed not to be repaired. This state of affairs is not good for our personal finances, puts us into an adversarial relationship with our own stuff, and takes a huge toll on the environment.
Making things fixable isn't a new idea. Not too long ago I was going through the pile of junk that people have donated to the Free Science Workshop and I found an old radio that had repair instructions and schematic inside the casing. This little gift is obviously intended for whoever unscrewed the case and took off the back plate. What happened to the relationship between the consumer and the manufacturer that made this sort of thing go away?
It's not a conspiracy theory. It turns out that it simply makes good business sense to manufacture things that are intended to fail. Did you really think that engineers could make remote controlled vehicles drive around Mars but still not know how to make a phone charging cable last more than a year? In 1924 an international gathering formed the "Phoebus cartel" a supervisory body responsible for deliberately shortening the lifespan of a lightbulb. The profits that followed ensured that planned obsolescense would become part of a "smart" business model for manufacturing.
"The cartel took its business of shortening the lifetime of bulbs every bit as seriously as earlier researchers had approached their job of lengthening it."
Unfortunately things went from bad to worse. Eventually not only were things being designed to fail, but they were being designed specifically not to be repaired.
Creating waste on purpose takes a serious toll on the environment. The size of our landfills grows with the size of profits. But what has been the cost--even to the engineering workforce itself--of discouraging generations of people from fixing things?
Some companies are smartening up. It's called circular design and it's all about designing with reuse and repurposing in mind. Ultimately it's an even smarter business strategy than planned obsolescence. Autodesk is a great example of a company who is embracing this approach. https://www.autodesk.com/sustainability/circular-design
Besides digging in and fixing your own broken stuff, support companies who demonstrate a commitment to the future in this important way.
Read more about the benefits of a circular economy here: https://medium.com/circulatenews/design-and-the-circular-economy-95bc4dafaec6
What would life be like if the whole economy was restructured to focus on humanity and the planet? Check out Kate Raworth's "Donut Economics": https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/
And if you like podcasts, here is an interview with her: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/doughnut-economics/
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