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
Hints towards a non-extractive economy An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org There’s a movement called the circular economy which is about designing services that don’t include throwing things away. There is no “away.” A non-extractive economy is going to look very different to today’s economy. These points feel opposed somehow but they are part of the same movement: With CupClub, it’s all about infrastructure. With the battery-free Game Boy, it’s untethered from infrastructure: once manufactured, no nationwide electricity grid is required to play. We’ll need better tools to track and measure. There will be new patterns for new types of services. New technologies to build new products. New language. So it’s fascinating seeing the pieces gradually come together. Introduction to Permaculture economicsrecyclinginfrastructure