Musing: We're All Completely Useless

Recently I read an article in WIRED magazine about we've all lost the ability to fix stuff. The writer's point was that back in the day (and by "the day" I suppose I mean sometime around the 50s or 60s), your average run-of-the-mill American male, let's call him "Biff", had the ability to fix a lot of the stuff he owned. If the radio broke, Biff could open it up and do a little soldering. If the car broke down, Biff could pop the hood and do more than pretend he knew what he was looking at. Et cetera. Nowadays, if something breaks we do a simple calculation: suppose a is the amount it would cost to repair and b is the inverse of the amount we give a shit (as in, did I really like that toaster anyway?) and c is the cost of a new one. If a + b > c, we just throw the thing away and get a new one. (I'm completely paraphrasing. I don't remember there being any algebra in the article I read. Actually, now that I read back over the little equation I just described, I'm starting to think I got that all wrong. But you get the point anyway.) So this writer was working away with a soldering iron, bemoaning his complete lack of skills, as he struggled to make a clock out of a couple of voltmeters--one, to denote hours and the other, minutes.

Biff?

It reminded me of a conversation I had with my irritating roommate my freshman year of college. He was all worked up that he didn't know how to fix his computer. (Actually, that was my computer! That bastard didn't have one of his own, and he and his girlfriend were always using mine. What really pissed me off was when his girlfriend used to get frustrated at the game she was playing and bang on the keyboard. So I guess I should have been the one getting worked up that he didn't know how to fix the thing.) His feeling was that the cause of our inabilities was that everyone's job was becoming more and more specialized, so they were less and less likely to be able to perform more general tasks like Biff could. I'm not sure I really agree with that assessment. Or rather, the observation is probably valid, but I'm not sure I agree that it's the cause of my inability to fix my cordless drill.

Maybe the cause is that our stuff itself is getting more complicated, so that it requires too much knowledge to fix. But I don't think that's the case either. A radio is a radio, n'est-ce pas? Is it that our stuff is getting less "fixable"? That probably does have a lot to do with it. I've read a lot in the last few years about how many products are "made to break." Companies have been more accepting of the fact that it costs a lot more to maintain a repair division than it does to just replace their broken merchandise--especially since most consumers don't bother sending it back. Apple is a perfect example of that phenomenon. Remember that whole period when people were getting all worked up about how the batteries on their iPods were breaking? Apple responded that iPods had about a two- or three-year lifespan, so people shouldn't expect that they'll last longer than that. Really, they just realized that trying to fix all the broken ones would cost them more profit than just enduring the small bit of bad publicity and selling people a new iPod. (Because that's what an iPod user is forced to buy if they want a new mp3 player, once they realize they can't play all the music they downloaded from iTunes on anything else... but that's a whole other blog post, and this one is already looking like it's going to go on way too long.)

And if the stuff we buy is actually made to break, our inability to fix it is probably compounded by the fact that it was shitty to begin with. Why does everything have to be made of plastic these days? I'm sure it was much easier for Biff to fix his kid's RC car when the car was made out of metal parts. These days, you're lucky if you can get a damn RC car open without breaking it even more.

The last reason for this phenomenon that I can think of is that, like most of us tend to do, I'm totally idealizing the 50s and 60s. Maybe the whole idea that people were able to fix any of their mechanical stuff is just an idealization of a bygone era. But that would mean there actually is no Biff. And that would be no fun. So let's just forget that one.

I can say this: fixing complicated stuff is awesome. I built a computer last year, and these days that basically means pushing cards into other cards and using a screwdriver very sparingly. But still, the first time I turned it on, and it actually... WORKED!!!... I was so proud of it I nearly did a dance. Honestly, you'd think I was a prehistoric apeman discovering the miracle of fire. And I really get off on replacing the lightbulbs on my car myself when they burn out. Even though they'll do it for free at the shop. And more importantly, even though it's just a stupid lightbulb, not the carburetor. But for one short minute, I feel like Biff.

And I'll say one other thing: I would LOVE to have a double voltmeter clock. And a soldering iron.