The Future Is Fixing Things
Let’s fix the old instead of over-producing the new
We used to think the best times for thinking about the future is at New Year’s or New Millennia. Rather, the future is most considered after a disaster, as now after the present pandemic. It is a time of looking at ourselves with an open mind, and honestly reviewing what has been disturbing and causing problems, and truly fixing them.
“Our sense of the future has expanded and contracted over time. But survival means learning new lessons from the shocks society is facing right now.” MIT Tech Review 5.27.21
Electronics
Damon Beres OneZero, Medium, says, “Build My Smartphone To Last … A movement afloat to change Planned Obsolescence of our electronic gear … Right to Repair legislation — manufacturers should not restrict access to information that would allow independent shops to fix busted gadgets. … We cannot leave things broken. A problem with our creation is one that can be fixed.”
Fashion
Vogue 5.15.21, “What Comes After Sustainability? By Emily Farra, about designers. “True sustainability — products that “give more back to the planet than they take from it” …“My hope is for the customer to become a little bit more educated about the inner workings of the apparel industry”. There has to be something that “comes next” — a term or a movement that reflects where we are now.”
I add what’s next is customers learning how to fix their own wardrobes, and future young designers will be taught to teach consumers how to redesign and fix. I explain in:
Vogue 5.27.21, “Taking back pieces you no longer use is going to become a service that every luxury brand will have to offer. … He didn’t mention repair services, but it was implied. As we shift our focus to high-quality, long-lasting items that can be worn, repaired, and consigned (and then consigned again), our perceptions of newness will change too, so vintage or pre-loved items may become even more valuable than a brand-spanking-new one.”
!.30.21 New York Times, Open Thread: “Recycling/Sustainability” comments: Georgia M. Canada: “No one has to buy anything new again. There is more than enough used stuff available.” M.Pipik, New York: “At H&M customers can pay a nominal amount to have unwanted clothing transformed into new garments.” Mj, Florida: Fashion industry excess material repurposed into fashionable accessories.” Amnesty, North Country: “I have been a thrifter of clothes for years, altering them as needed. Michael Redwood, United Kingdom: “Leather hides and skins are recognized as a by-product of the meat and dairy industry. We should not be trying to replace it with plastic but celebrating all we have as a quality sustainable material.”
“Fixing what the Internet Broke”
Shira Ovide, On Tech, New York Times, 3.01.21 “The unruly mess of how to find what you want to stream online … because companies care more about their bottom line than their customers, so as streaming services scatter entertainment around like confetti, it’s almost impossible to figure out how they work together. Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google … thousands of options that constantly change and vary by country … some return unreliable junk.”
Fixing Housing
3.17.21, New York Times,” Restorative Architecture, Affordable housing earns Anne Lacation and Philip Vasal the Pulitzer Prize. They have never demolished a building in order to construct a new one. … Designers saw what was worthwhile about existing architecture and added to it.”
Fixing Cities
4.7.21, MIT Tech Review, “The city is not the customer … At their best, cities tailor complicated networks of old and new sociotechnical systems to work in a particular place for communities with different cultures, interests, and priorities. And finally, public participation is essential — to respond to the needs of the community, not the motives of industry.
Fixing Economic and Population Growth
4.7.21 MIT Tech Review: “Calls for “the end of growth” … “And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!” thundered Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish climate activist”
6.6.21 New York Times, Letters, “Let’s Celebrate a Lower Birth Rate”: Marian Starkey, Washington, “Cleaner air and water will result from our slower growth, and even be inspirational.” Alexandra Paul, Pacific Palisades, Ca. “With a smaller population there will be more resources for everyone, the gains are huge.” Astrid Braun, Cleveland, (Gen. Z) “We don’t want to face an uncertain future, facing a world of climate change disasters.” Carl Mezoff, Stamford, Conn. “Common argument that more babies are needed to support our graying population are based on a Ponzi-scheme-like principle that one never has to pay the piper for the excess population.”
Fixing the Presidency
June 8, 2021, Editorial, Boston Globe, “Future-Proofing the Presidency: Donald Trump exposed weaknesses in our system of government that could now be exploited by a corrupt leader with control of the White House. Urgent reforms are needed to prevent the rise of an American tyrant.”
Fixing Covid-19
“Is Mother Nature Trying to Tell Us Something?” says Alan Weisman, in the Boston Globe Magazine April 26, 2020. ”Covid-19 is a warning to brace ourselves for corrections that Nature makes when a species outstrips its environment. It’s painful, though, when your own species is the one being corrected. … The pandemic proves the planet can go on without us. Now’s our chance to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Thank you for inspiration from the many writers on Medium, New York Times, Boston Globe, and MIT Tech Review:
Dr. Mehmet Yildiz: “Using Design Thinking, we can resolve many debilitating and critical issues such as climate change, sustainability, racism, and the recent pandemic. … Design Thinking practice assists the practitioners to understand uncertain and ambiguous situations in the earlier phases of the solution lifecycle”
Darshak Rana: “Fortune Favors the Prepared Mind … All you need is will and faith to believe that everything’s possible.” And, “The Day The Earth Stood Still … God is unmoved, to remind a million chances, he bestowed to change [fix] ourselves.”
Lanu Pitan: “The basic theory of the mind is such that the Universe responds to what we constantly think in our mind. We all have this mind processing power, but most do not either realize it or do not know how to utilize it.”[Let’s think more in our minds about fixing things.]
