A bi-weekly talk show by The Restart Project, plus a monthly documentary series produced by brilliant podcaster Dave Pickering, based on fixing triumphs, heartbreaks and wisdom shared at our community repair events – called Restart Parties – here in London. We go into real depth about good and bad design, obstacles to repair of electronics, emotional aspects of ownership, environmentally irresponsible business models, and the “end of life” of our gadgets. This podcast is for you if you'd like to fix your relationship with electronics. Let’s rethink, restart.
https://therestartproject.org/podcast/
Restart Podcast Ep 5: How repair economies can thrive (again)
In this episode, we discuss commercial repair of gadgets, electronics and home appliances. Most of us can testify, it feels less and less of a possibility these days.
Podcaster Dave Pickering interviews designer and writer John Thackara about how this may be a “temporary blip”. He paints a picture of what local, (re)emergent economies of repair might look like. Thackara’s new book How To Thrive in the Next Economy (Thames & Hudson, 2015) shaped our questions and provides clues for readers.
With input from professional repairers and participants at Restart Parties, we discussed transparency, trust, cost, access to information, informal solutions, as well as the need for repair to be embedded locally in retail. Repeatedly, people told us they would like to learn from the experience of paying for a repair, and not be treated like a number.
Lastly, Ugo mentions the symbiosis between community repair events like Restart Parties and commercial repairs.
The bottom line is, a better relationship with our stuff, often mediated by talented repairers, will improve our quality of life.
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