The Self-Repair Manifesto

Tuesday, 09 November 2010 20:02

The Self-Repair Manifesto

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Kyle Wiens of iFixIt posted a call to action today asking all good hackers to require everything they buy to be repairable. We asked him to comment on the current state of the gadget industry and the problems facing folks who want to fix their own gadgets.

Our relationship with our gadgets has spiraled out of control. We buy things, use them for a short while, and then replace them with the

next model. Manufacturers build products that break quickly so we are forced to buy another.

The entire technology industry is constantly pushing consumers toward the new. GM invented the concept of planned obsolescence in the 1920s and corporations have since perfected it. We constantly promote cutting edge, sometimes-better-but-always-different products. I’ve certainly lost track of the year-to-year differences of the iPod Nano—but gosh, the latest ones have multi-touch! The latest iPod Nano also has a built-in non-replaceable battery limiting its lifespan to 300 cycles. If you use your iPod every day, that’s less than a year!