Care to repair?

With the cost of consumer goods dropping to their lowest ever levels, the side effect may be a loss of our skills to repair, make and invent.

WITH APPLE'S CO-FOUNDER Steve Jobs passing away recently, the media was deluged with obituaries rightly lauding his visionary genius in the realm of consumer electronics and entertainment. Many of those offering plaudits knew of him through his easy-to-use, sleekly designed computers, music players and phones.

A small cadre of hold-outs, however, continued to express their bitterness over Mr Jobs' intricately crafted gadgets, because they leave little opportunity for under-the-hood tinkering.

His adulation reflects a change in society. We have become consumers. Rarely creators. We spend much of our precious time working, in order to afford purchases from an every expanding cornucopia of new 'stuff'. Stuff we know how to use. But not how it works. Or, importantly, how to make it work again after it stops performing.
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Repair is, against the odds, quietly making a comeback.