The children who didn’t know how to repair their toys
Danielle George, Professor of Radio Frequency Engineering at the University of Manchester, has recently highlighted what she sees as the problem of a generation of young people obsessed with buying electronic gadgets of all kinds but that has no idea whatsoever about how to repair them when they go wrong, instead opting to buy new ones. She’s talking about what we might call an “it just works” society in which we are increasingly dependent on things functioning the workings of which we haven’t the remotest idea.
The rapid pace of technological change means that in many cases, when a gadget breaks after a certain period of time, it’s considered obsolete by the existence of others in the market with more features and that are seen in terms of the desirability of those new, shiny features, coupled of course with the appeal of consumerism, and of course our wish to simply own something new or fashionable: if you hold onto an old gadget for a long time, you might end up feeling somehow inferior to somebody who has the latest version.
Never before in history have industries been so subject to such speedy innovation: previous generations bought things believing that they would be using them for much longer periods of time than we do.
At the same time, it has to be said that those same generations were also less and less able or prepared to repair things. We have to go back a good few generations to find communities with the skills to be self-sufficient. This in part can be explained by an increase in disposable income, and as Cuba’s creativity in the face of half a century of a US blockade shows, necessity is the mother of invention; similarly, my grandmother was able to repair her children’s clothes, allowing them to be handed down from the eldest sibling to the next.
But let’s be honest: if we can’t be bothered any more to bang a nail in the wall to hang a picture, how on earth are we going to start using micro-screwdrivers and soldering irons to replace a missing electronic part? In the same way that we no longer change the oil in our cars or have even the faintest idea as to why they might have broken down, we have stopped developing any knowledge about how the rest of the things that we use work. A cellphone contains innumerable components that could be reused in many ways, but aside from the so-called maker community, nobody seems much interested in opening one up to have a look inside, and much less when they have stopped working. When something goes wrong, we take it back to the shop if it is still under guarantee, and if not, stick it in a drawer and then go out to buy another one.
Danielle George asks if we are losing something as we move toward a culture of this kind: both in terms of efficiency and sustainability. From my middle-aged perspective in life, this trend seems increasingly marked: but I have to admit that my repair skills are far fewer than my father’s; that said, my daughter has simply no idea whatsoever about mending anything.
Curiosity prompts me to keep some gadgets or toys, even stuff I find in the garbage, a habit that my family finds hard to understand: and I guess that I am in an increasingly shrinking minority fascinated by how things work.
But, you know what: I don’t really think that this is a generational problem; I think it’s something that goes back many years. In any event, what is certainly true is that even if we wanted to recover our forebears’ thriftiness, most of us would now find it almost impossible.
(En español, aquí)
