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Professor: Young People Are "Lost Generation" Who Can No Longer Fix Gadgets
antdude points out this story about one of the problems with our ever increasingly disposable world. "Young people in Britain have become a lost generation who can no longer mend gadgets and appliances because they have grown up in a disposable world, the professor giving this year's Royal Institution Christmas lectures has warned. Danielle George, Professor of Radio Frequency Engineering, at the University of Manchester, claims that the under 40s expect everything to 'just work' and have no idea what to do when things go wrong. Unlike previous generations who would ‘make do and mend’ now young people will just chuck out their faulty appliances and buy new ones. But Prof George claims that many broken or outdated gadgets could be fixed or repurposed with only a brief knowledge of engineering and electronics. "
This story is a dupe from my grandfather's generation, who cried about the same thing.
I have detailed technical knowledge. However my time is not worth fixing every small gadget that breaks. If I break a blender, its simply not worth me sourcing parts, waiting, and then spending an hour repairing it.
Part of the problem could be that so many things are integrated now.
Entry-level audio gear, for instance, tends to use integrated amplifiers -- no longer can you fix easily fix a blown power transistor, as you could with older gear. Same thing with cars -- adjusting the timing on a car was sort of a rite of passage for many, but it's hardly feasible on a new car with computer-controlled everything.
Oh sure - if a tiny grain capacitor without marking is failing - I bet the author can't even de-solder it
find the same part and solder it back on
same with BGA chip - ever try desolder a 400 balls BGA chip in your gadget and try to find that chip in your radio shack?
This is why there are no forums full of information of how to replace the screen on your phone or tablet. This is why ifixit.com doesn't exist. This is why you can't order OBD scanners for your car.
It's only a minority of people who are skilled and interested enough to fix things. But that's always been so. It's just that now it's typically cheaper to replace broken things (well, not cars) than call in someone who can fix them, because labor costs for repair are so high compared to initial manufacturing costs.
maybe these infernal new-fangled gadgets are close to impossible to fix, requiring special tools and facilities that papa's john deere did not.
Nullius in verba
It's also a cultural shift - When I was a kid, I remember my dad being down in the basement for hours fixing stuff, working on the car or what have you, while my mum took care of us kids. Now that I'm a dad, I'm out at the park with my kids, or taking them to swimming lessons or just doing general Dad stuff. So while I have the aptitude for fixing stuff (likely inherited from my dad), I don't have the time - I'm busy parenting. It's just not acceptable for a Dad to be down in the basement or the garage for hours on end while the mum upstairs is going insane.
No, you ignore this idiot.
When your CUSTOMERS start complaining about this sort of thing, you do something about it.
When a professor somewhere complains that your customers are doing it wrong by buying things that they want then tossing them when they break, you don't waste time worrying about it.
Note that any redesign of most devices to make them more repairable will almost certainly make them more expensive to buy in the first place. Whether you can make something that is repairable and lower cost over the life of the device (as opposed to buying cheaper and replacing instead of repairing) is debatable.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You're the second person to make this mistake in the thread.
"Danielle". Not "Daniel."
ie, a woman.
Interesting bias. A professor of engineering has to be a man, right?
when you open the latest gadget, it's black boxes, nothing that you can see working, or replace without just desoldering a chip.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
...was supposed to be the US' economic saviour after WWII. It worked for a while but then grew into what we have now. Some people even believe we can save our environment through consumerism. To sum up some of the comments so far:
Consumer items are not built to last longer than their warranty so that consumers continue to buy more, more frequently.
Consumer items have become more delicate and more complicated over time and so easier to break and harder to fix.
Teaching and/or encouraging people to "make do and mend" is in direct contradiction to consumerism and is unlikely to be tolerated.
If too many people stop buying things, the economy will suffer.
The world, its chemistry, its physical nature, is changing dramatically because we measure and value our success according to how quickly we can dig stuff out of the ground and turn it into pollution.
If not outright forbidden to do so. We live in a time where not only things get complicated enough that you'd need to study everything you want to fix for a while before you could even start finding out what's broken, more often than not some legalese bullshit is thrown between your legs where you may not even start working on something you allegedly bought. You see, back in my days we did something funny with the stuff we bought: We "owned" it. It meant that we could do whatever we damn well please with the stuff we bought. No such luck anymore, the more technology your gadgets contain and the more gimmicky it is, the higher the chance that you must not do anything but use it in whatever fashion the creator wants you to. No tinkering, no "fixing", no improving, and sure as HELL no talking about doing any of that!
Most technical appliances are actually defect at delivery. They refuse to do what you want, like, say, you buy a new game console and it doesn't play whatever you want it to play, despite the technical capability. You must now not go and fix the defect so it would do what you want it to do. In some countries it's even already an offense that could cost you a nasty fine or even land you in jail to fix your broken device. Let alone do it for others.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.