Here's another cool IFIXIT contribution to reuse, repair and recycling. I have a link to IFIXIT.com on the Resources page, as well as to Silicon Sam's RepairFAQ. I must say I initially thought that Kyle and the crew at IFIXIT had their work cut out for them if they were to improve on the wiki-repair site that Sam M. Goldwasser invented in the 1990s. But the use of video (without a lot of language audio) makes IFIXIT a terrific tool.
There will always be a place for Silicon Sam in low bandwidth, dial up nations. But as I see more and more broadband and DSL in places like Egypt, Malaysia, India, Brazil and China, I think the IFIXIT site is going to gain a following and grow into something more than people might be imagining.
It's pretty difficult to hire people to be an expert in everything. Usually, what happens in our industry is that someone gets good at some particular thing. One woman may be great at IPad repairs, another man may specialize in TVs, some people do stereos. It's normal for the person who does CRTs well to sell the laptops to someone who does laptops well. Repair people trading with each other - that's what geeks of color is all about. If you try to mandate that every person know how to fix every piece of equipment himself - or shred it - you've destroyed not only value, but trade. The "cultural lobotomy" always seems to be proposed by the people who don't know other cultures, and don't know what they are missing.
I used www.repairfaq.org for years to tell whether a Technician of a Different Color knew what he was doing or not. IFIXIT likewise can be the "rosetta stone" of fair trade. If someone claims they know how to fix something, you can watch the video and ask questions. You'll find out whether they know what they are doing. And it usually makes sense of other things - like if they were going to burn the iphone for copper, why exactly didn't they want the notebook? After ten years, I find the geeks and the trade starts to snap together like a map, making sense of what people do want and will pay for, and sense of the 75% which is junk and no one wants it.
There will always be a place for Silicon Sam in low bandwidth, dial up nations. But as I see more and more broadband and DSL in places like Egypt, Malaysia, India, Brazil and China, I think the IFIXIT site is going to gain a following and grow into something more than people might be imagining.
It's pretty difficult to hire people to be an expert in everything. Usually, what happens in our industry is that someone gets good at some particular thing. One woman may be great at IPad repairs, another man may specialize in TVs, some people do stereos. It's normal for the person who does CRTs well to sell the laptops to someone who does laptops well. Repair people trading with each other - that's what geeks of color is all about. If you try to mandate that every person know how to fix every piece of equipment himself - or shred it - you've destroyed not only value, but trade. The "cultural lobotomy" always seems to be proposed by the people who don't know other cultures, and don't know what they are missing.
I used www.repairfaq.org for years to tell whether a Technician of a Different Color knew what he was doing or not. IFIXIT likewise can be the "rosetta stone" of fair trade. If someone claims they know how to fix something, you can watch the video and ask questions. You'll find out whether they know what they are doing. And it usually makes sense of other things - like if they were going to burn the iphone for copper, why exactly didn't they want the notebook? After ten years, I find the geeks and the trade starts to snap together like a map, making sense of what people do want and will pay for, and sense of the 75% which is junk and no one wants it.
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