Category Archives: Consumption

Has Tech Ever Broken Your Heart?

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UPDATE: see the results of our online “therapy” at the end of this post!

Have you ever brought home a new gadget which you had high expectations for, and it then broke your heart? Or did your favourite, 10 year old pair of headphones finally die on you, leaving you bereft? Or perhaps you tried in vain to keep your laptop alive and then watch it flatline before your eyes?

For Valentine’s Day, we would like to hear more about your electronics relationships and heartbreaks. Tell us a story, or post a photo of the electronic gadget that broke your heart. If you’re on Twitter, use the hashtag #ITbrokemyheart

#ITbrokeMYheart

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The gift of repair

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stuff-breaks-final

Why not give the gift of a simple promise to help a friend or loved one repair something in 2013? You could either include this in a Christmas card, or present it with a gift as a “personal warranty” for the gift, or you could fold up and drop in a stocking.

We’ll be handing these out at our Christmas parties this weekend, Saturday in Belsize and Sunday in Brixton.

Please share, print and use, or get inspired to make your own version. (We’re licensing this Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike)

Download the high-resolution colour version here
Download a high-res version optimised for black & white printing here
Download a high-res version optimised for printing in grey scale here

If you need help finding a repair clinic or café near you, consult our growing global map – “Community (of) Repair”.

#Mozfest pt 1: The politics of making the future

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We attended Mozfest this weekend – and as we still do not even have anything web-related to show (hopefully next year) – we were there to gain inspiration and really push our thinking forward.

The Mozilla Festival is a radically “open” geek paradise, where hundreds of people from around the world came to co-create and share ideas and tools, including online media, gaming, educational tools.

Photo of Joi Ito by Flickr user Paul_Clarke used on a CC license

We left really challenged to build a truly open community (which we will get to in our second post), but we also left with some lingering disquiet with blindspots in the “politics” of the community.

This post is intended to be a contribution to the “writeable” society and intended to start a conversation, so please read on and let us know what you think. Continue reading →

The Power of We, consumers of e-stuff

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We have started to notice what we call an increasing ‘disquiet’ with the way we consume technology. The iPhone is the most common trigger for this feeling, but it is symbolic of greater unease with short lifecycle of e-stuff, sandwiched by concerns about production, supply chains and then disposal.

You know it’s serious when one of the US’ biggest sketch comedy TV shows goes after the frivolity of tech journalism and reminds us of the human costs of our gadgets.

We are tired of feeling powerless – in some sleepwalking state of mindless consumption. Of course we want innovation, we want progress, but at a pace that makes sense to us as humans.

We decide, not some marketing and manufacturing behemoth. Continue reading →

“Permanent Error”

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We don’t tend to like to use guilt as a driver for behaviour change. But there is something so powerful about South African photographer Pieter Hugo’s work on e-waste recyclers in Ghana, that we could not resist sharing.

Hugo will be speaking on Friday at Photographer’s Gallery in London – a talk which is already sold out. The exhibition of his work lasts until September 9. Continue reading →

Why is repairing so important?

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The Restart Project is all about changing consumer behaviour in the ICT industry, about facilitating the collective learning that will demand hardware and software manufacturers to adhere to open standards, to allow for openness at all levels, to design for durability and compatibility. To look forward with progressive new features, without leaving behind users with slightly older hardware.

Repair is an essential component of our vision. It is instrumental in transforming our obsessions about technology into sustainable technology ecosystems, where owners can claim back control over the very tools at the heart of our digital lives.
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Documentary: The Light Bulb Conspiracy

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UPDATE: The film will screen again on September, Thursday 13, 6:30pm at UCL – it is a free event.

Tonight the documentary “The Light Bulb Conspiracy” debuts in London at the Open City Documentary Festival. Watch the trailer here and join us at 6:45pm for the screening, plus discussion with Social Innovation Camp afterwards about combating obsolescence.

The Light Bulb Conspiracy (Trailer) from Hans Fleischer on Vimeo.

Examining the Apple business model

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We are attending this event on “Apple Business Model” sponsored by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (Cresc)

This workshop has a double aim. First, we aim to be more analytic about the Apple Inc’s company business model without assuming this is representative or transferable. Researchers will present argument and evidence about Apple’s multiple sources of advantage in manufacturing, sourcing, branding and architecture and focus on the consequences especially for the supply chain in China. Second, we aim to make the connection with broader academic and practitioner debates about the outcomes of globalization and financialization, specifically about where the good jobs and skills have gone and the effects of shareholder value in the high-income countries.

Continue reading →

“The curse of beautiful technology”

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We enjoyed “Steve Jobs, Kraftwerk and The Curse of Beautiful Technology” by Joshua Kopstein on Motherboard. He touches on something really important here about the “man – machine relationship”, saying that “we must keep our desire for elegant technology in check.” He describes what he calls “the curse of beautiful technology”

the confinement which leaves us unable to pursue our own ideas of beauty and perfection. From within the confines of beautifully integrated systems, we see marketplaces, music services, everything the average person could possibly want. Everything, so you never have to leave. I’ve likened it to living inside a lavish resort hotel: spacious, convenient and attractive, but its walls stay the same color and you know you could never go out back and build a deck. Because it would have to be a white marble deck, with rounded edges, and you would have to be an officially licensed deck-builder.