Rethinking Repair An Essay by Steven J. Jackson sjackson.infosci.cornell.edu This chapter is an exercise in broken world thinking. It asks what happens when we take erosion, breakdown, and decay, rather than novelty, growth, and progress, as our starting points in thinking through the nature, use, and effects of information technology and new media. The modern infrastructural idealThe fulcrum of these two worldsA creature of bones, not wordsThe world is always breakingA side that goes unrecognized+8 More 104. Site RepairMakers and MakingMaintenance and Care repair
239. Small Panes Problem When plate glass windows became possible, people thought that they would put us more directly in touch with nature. In fact, they do the opposite. Solution Divide each window into small panes. These panes can be very small indeed, and should hardly ever be more than a foot square. To get the exact size of the panes, divide the width and height of the window by the number of panes. Then each window will have different sized panes according to its height and width. Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language Einmal Ist KeinmalProtected, yet tuned inWe have lost our sense of intimate life windows