This resonates with me a lot.<p>My father is an old school car mechanic in eastern europe who (at least while i was young) hoarded all kinds of things and reused/repurposed them. I inherited his mentality. At some point he partnered up with a guy and they started their own business. His partner is more of a capitalist. He would run the computer diagnostics on the car, replace whatever the computer says is broken without much root cause analysis, then the old parts are thrown out. This gets repeated until the car runs. They make money on each part. The insurance company pays and everyone is happy. My dad's quality of life is better. He has a weekend house now. He sometimes complains how in the old days one would really fix things instead of replacing them, but he is getting older and not in a position change how the world works.<p>My own story is playing out a very similar way and I am constantly struggling to decide what is the right thing to do and what kind of person I want to be. Most people of my age (especially in the US) don't even think about these things though.<p>Edit: formatting.
Never thought I'd see the word Gambiarra at the top of HN. By the way, Portugal has a word with a bit of a similar meaning (<a href="https://i.imgur.com/7YHjJHs.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/7YHjJHs.jpg</a>)<p>For anyone interested in how Cubans do it, I recommend this 8 min video from Motherboard (it has subtitles):<p>> In 1991, Cuba's economy began to implode. "The Special Period in the Time of Peace" was the government's euphemism for what was a culmination of 30 years worth of isolation. It began in the 60s, with engineers leaving Cuba for America. Ernesto Oroza, a designer and artist, studied the innovations created during this period. He found that the general population had created homespun, Frankenstein-like machines for their survival, made from everyday objects. Oroza began to collect these machines, and would later contextualize it as "art" in a movement he dubbed "Technological Disobedience."<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-XS4aueDUg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-XS4aueDUg</a>
Hey all, thanks for the attention and comments. A slightly updated version of this text was published in Tvergastein (walled garden version here - <a href="https://www.academia.edu/20808625/Gambiarra_Repair_Culture" rel="nofollow">https://www.academia.edu/20808625/Gambiarra_Repair_Culture</a> , anyone interested in the PDF please let me know). And indeed, I have not explored that the "repair" side of it that much. More recently, I've been trying to think of "transformation of matter" to frame a wider field that would encompass digital making, arts & crafts, repair, maintenance, customization and others. I wrote another two texts last year while researching that perspective: Transformed Worlds (<a href="https://medium.com/@felipefonseca/transformed-worlds-9a6bd7c44e8e" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@felipefonseca/transformed-worlds-9a6bd7c...</a> ) and Knowledge, Skill and Labor (<a href="https://medium.com/@felipefonseca/knowledge-skill-and-labor-1c8f5d89a1b4" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@felipefonseca/knowledge-skill-and-labor-...</a> ). I'd love to read everyone's thoughts on those as well.
(Felipe Fonseca / <a href="http://efeefe.me" rel="nofollow">http://efeefe.me</a> )
PC recycling and repair is alive and well in the US. The SF Bay Area has the Computer Repair Center.[1] In Shenzhen, as was discussed on here, there's an active phone recycling culture, with people doing chip-level replacement on iPhones.<p>PC recycling was easier in the desktop era, where you could take a pile of discarded PCs and swap around boards, hard drives, cases, and power supplies until you had something that worked. All you really needed was a screwdriver. Laptops are tougher, but still repairable without too many special tools and training.<p>Mobile phone repair takes special skills, training, equpment, and parts, all of which are available.[2] Third-party iPhone parts are available. I'm amazed that people are doing SMD board rework in small repair shops, but they are.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.crc.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.crc.org/</a>
[2] <a href="https://stsparts.us/" rel="nofollow">https://stsparts.us/</a>
Having grown up in Brazil, where computers and parts are expensive - and in a time where the country was recovering from a galloping inflation and a failed attempt from the government to cut it back by freezing everyone's saving accounts - I can very strongly relate to this.<p>In fact, I think most brazilians of my generation which share same taste for building things are used to prototyping things with "a lot of duct tape" and reusing parts by disassembling unused/old toys, small machines/appliances, etc, and reusing what they can to make something new.<p>About the "gambiarra" term, it has a lot of connotations associated (some bad), but it also carries an idea of "subverting the original intent of the designer" or "subverting the intended usage of the parts/pieces". Which is why it fits perfectly in the idea of "hacking" for repurposing and recycling.
Ha, when I read the post title I knew it would come from a (Brazilian) Portuguese author.<p>The way I would explain "Gambiarra": it's a quick fix that relies heavily on an ad hoc solution instead of following the generally accepted principles for solving a problem.
This speaks to a disparity between the first and second (and third) worlds (and yes, I know that these are outdated terms); in the US writ large, we take it technology for granted, and have been marketed to thusly; as such, our products are disposable, obsolescence is as much about culture as it is about cycles of technology, and we are marketed to as such.<p>Go further afield, and tech cultures spring up around technology we'd otherwise take for granted in the Anglosphere. Sure, there's some cultural cachet around old 'things,' but to my cynical mind, it's cachet for the sake of cachet. The label of useless is applied to last generation's gear, and it's thrown out, recycled, or stuck in a drawer.<p>If only we had a more open and less, shall we say capitalist/IP-based view of our technology, we could create an ecosystem where 2012's iPhone, with ample computing power for many tasks, could become a valuable part of said ecosystem instead of being a relic. Similarly, instead of trashing broken things, we could repair them; there exist almost a stigma surrounding a broken phone screen. Why repair when you're due for an upgrade in a few months? Don't be so base as to actually fix your shit, that's not what you're being sold; upgrade, advance, incrementalize.
Felipe Fonseca's critical thoughts about the last 10-15 years of the "makers" movement.<p>Very insightful reading how the general culture of the movement has changed from a repair-reuse-recycle to a prototype-industrial-capitalistic mentality.
From the title I was hoping to read more about a repair culture such as Bunny Huang discusses when he talks about the possibility of <i>legacy electronics</i> in his latest book <i>The Hardware Hacker</i>. Of course I have had computers repaired from time to time, and even put life back into an old stereo receiver and analog television, but generally in the developed world the economics of buy new vs repair keep repair culture on the fringe, not just with electronics.
<p><pre><code> When the maker culture becomes eminently entrepreneurial,
we should wonder what mechanisms are set into motion. It
may as well be the old capitalist drive to turn the
critique to itself into the gears of its own reinvention
gaining ground. Could we ever escape that path?
</code></pre>
Lately when I read things like this I wonder, how are the people in the movement -- whatever movement -- supposed to make a living without being entrepreneurial?
Probably a good thread to mention the fairphone <a href="http://fairphone.com/" rel="nofollow">http://fairphone.com/</a><p>Not the prettiest phone but it does what it says on the box/ it's easy to fix it yourself