Mr. Fixit

I thought I'd bring one out from the drawer. Enjoy the dust-off.


Fixing the whole world can start with your toaster.

Do you ever feel that without our devices we’d have very few vices at all? Put all of us together; all the people, places, gadgets, stuff and things that make up the living machine that is our society. Picture this big, sloppy engine turning in its inefficiently perpetual manner. As a mechanism, no one will argue we are need of a tune-up, but who can perform such a therapeutic and mechanical wonder? In what capacity are we in need of this alteration, in our hardwiring or in our software?

Who among us is qualified to deliver this devised diagnosis?

We come home from televisions to televisions and images of images we seek to obtain and ridicule, that our ancestors would have never have dreamt of seeing, or believed in needing, and would not have missed. The more we get plugged in the more detached we become, from the earth, from our neighbor, and even from the devices designed to keep us connected.

If the outlet you are currently plugged into ceased its outlay, if the power went out, the mechanics went on leave, if the doctors weren’t on call and the helplines weren’t online, where would you be? What could you contribute to your own survival? What about the survival of the community you depend on?

We’ve constructed our incubators and sit happily in our fake wombs, but have become unfamiliar with the sources of our warmth and security. The Japanese use the same word for crisis and opportunity; we should adopt a similar moniker for convenience and encumbrance.

Perhaps we need to forget Encumvenience and devise a de-vice.

There is no debate that our automobiles and televisions are in charge, but it’s staggering how little we know about the keepers of our mojo constructed for us by our brothers and our sisters.

The problem therefore being not that we have the conveniences, but that we have so easily relinquished the ignition keys to those conveniences. Look around the room at the vices that surround you. How much do you know about them? I mean, you know their function, you know their brand name and perhaps the part of the world from which they came. You know that it needs batteries or an outlet to function, and that if you drop it from too high that it will cease to function. Most importantly, you know that your life is a little bit better because of that device and the service it provides you. You know you enjoy that service, but you likely don’t question how that service is performed.

Why do we have no desire to learn how these services are mechanically conjured for us? Why are we so easily satisfied and contented with warm food and entertainment just provided for us like infants? Doesn’t this eagerly pawed warm nippled bottle represent a regression from the motivation and relentless innovation that got is this far?

We’ve asked ‘how’ and ‘why’ so many times before. We have religion and philosophy and competition and war because of our compelling need to question, but for some reason when that mystery comes in the form of convenience we stop asking those questions. On the surface we have a device-addicted culture. A population more concerned about creature comforts than creatures. We have identities that are established through packaging and a society that is smarter, but older, fatter, and increasingly more helpless.

In very simple terms, we don’t know how the devices we depend on function. Though this may seem trivial in our neon world, it creates a fundamental problem as a worldwide organism. As individuals, generally speaking, we no longer have a symbiotic relationship with the machines and devices and structures we depend on. We feel detached from them, though the umbilical cord is fiber optic and as strong as titanium.

There are about as many solutions to our detachment as there are items in your sharper self-image catalogue, but more often than not they involve a leap of faith that as a race of humans we simply aren’t capable of. At least not without an escalator.

Don’t think for a minute that I will be putting down my remote and unplugging my… well… anything. Let me take you for a moment to a world of my design.

Imagine a place where you knew how everything worked. You understood how the pictures came through the magic box in the living room, how things got sucked into your vacuum, how the fridge kept your food cold, and what that fourth sound was when your started your car. Even further, you knew what made the paint in your den brown, what made concrete hard, what made your chicken fingers crunchy, and what happened to them after you swallowed them.

In this world you can actually picture the anatomy of these devices clearly in your mind; you understand their structures as accurately as the spelling of your own name. There is no mystery to how they perform the services you count on them for. Moreover, this knowledge is common knowledge. Understanding the mechanics of everyday devices is everyone’s business. Everyone around you is familiar with the gadgets that make up the structure of modern life, how a signal travels through a wire to a modem and into a computer to become e-mail, how the same signal can travel to a satellite and appear on someone’s phone, and how they get caramel inside those chocolate squares.

There is nothing special about this world, nothing in the water that makes people smarter, nothing in their genetics that makes them more curious, or more tools in their pockets that allow them to tinker. It’s a level of responsibility that compels them. With the advent of their industrial revolution, a different convenience was born, one that lived hand in hand with the thirst for knowledge that had steered them that far. They considered the knowledge that designed their luxury to be public domain.

In part, they saw the self-preserving value of understanding organisms both of flesh and of fiberglass, knowing ‘thyself’ more and more as the information became realized. Also, the idea of License spanned farther than just cars and guns, and further than merely operating the mechanism without causing the death of another. If one were to operate a machine, why wouldn’t that operator want to know everything about what they’re operating and how it accomplishes that operation? Any less would seem as foolish to them as using a chainsaw as a toothbrush.

Naturally one immediately wonders about this world’s unfortunate specialist sector; the doctors, mechanics, tree surgeons, cobblers and undertakers. Would the specialist go the way of the dinosaur in this world? It might be easy to assume that the need for someone who has studied and apprenticed a certain field would fossilize and petrify. Photo-mat technicians, Subway sandwich artists, vascular surgeons; why would these people exist in this Utopia?

You needn’t fear for them, their role is merely different. As much as awareness is prevalent in this world, its utopian perfection does not include a longer day, free hardware, or knowledge of undiscovered symptoms that are cutting edge before they are common. The knowledgeable public of this miraculous land still require the services of people with lifts for their vehicles and x-rays for their broken bones to perform the general maintenance required to keep our world’s mechanical heart pumping.

On a quantitative level, consider how the knowledge to fix and maintain the mechanisms of our lives would immediately affect our world. Think of the condition of a planet where disposal isn't the first thing its inhabitants consider to deal with a problem. Consider how convenience would expand to include terms like longevity while excluding the need for warranty and obsolescence.

On a level of far grander quality, consider how every public dynamic would function if the understanding of function wasn’t limited to a narrow faction. What happens when everyone can contribute when something that we count on ceases to function? Contribution: Surgeons standing over a patient, grease monkeys gathered around a ’64 Mustang, four kids getting your order at Wendy’s. Every quandary, every calamity, every injury would potentially be surrounded by people who could offer a solution, who could combine their knowledge gathered through their understanding of License and fix the problem.

Everyone around every table offers a knowledgeable answer rather than waiting for their number to be called.

On the surface, we have smaller junkyards and an underpopulation of old car parts and broken toasters. Closer to the center of the onion, we have a population of Mr. and Mrs. John Q Fixits who have the knowledge to offer repair. We have people in places that have their things and understand that ownership includes a responsibility to the things that pop, call, comfort and govern.

Sometimes I think that we are going to figure it ALL out about 6 hours before our poor planet crumbles. Anyone know where we put the warranty card for our planet?

As for your toaster: Fix it yourself, then offer to fix your neighbor’s.

As for me, I’m waiting for a toast.


Patrick