What do you fix?
Photos via Jaymi Heimbuch
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Maker Faire Bay Area is an annual event that brings together all the DIYers, tinkerers, thinkers, and geeks from all hobbies together in one place to show off their latest innovations, swap ideas, and get inspired. The maker community is one that firmly believes in the Repair Manifesto, which eschews the idea of disposability and instead says everything should be repairable. If you can't open it, you don't own it, says the manifesto, and one company is working hard to make sure you know how to open, and fix, everything.
iFixIt founder Kyle Wiens sees a problem - there just aren't good repair manuals out there for most products. If your camera breaks, for instance, it's likely you're not going to be able to find repair instructions for your exact model, let alone issue you want to fix. Too many gadgets are becoming e-waste for no reason other than we can't easily fix them. Wiens was not satisfied with the random YouTube video showing how to repair a handful of gadgets so he created iFixIt.
The website started out as a place for people with Apple products to find high quality repair manuals for their devices. The site became known for its tear-apart guides, in which it takes a new product, takes it entirely apart, and shows you what's inside. Now, it's expanding into creating repair manuals for everything. Literally.
At Maker Faire, iFixit was looking to recruit more experts and tinkerers to create repair manuals for devices. They already have a few hundred online, but they want to grow that into a high quality manual, complete with crisp photos and clear instructions, for every single thing from changing the breaks on electric bikes to installing a new hard drive in an old computer.
So, what do you want to know how to fix? Let iFixit know so that they can get someone on creating a manual. Or, if you are handy and know how to fix things, please volunteer to write guides. iFixit is eager to get more techies trained up for writing and publishing manuals.
We need to revamp our lost repair culture, reducing how much we consume and how much e-waste we generate. iFixit is on the task, and you can be too.
More on iFixit
iFixit Launches Global Repair Community - Never Throw Out a Gadget Again!
Maker Faire 09: The iFixit Global Repair Community
iFixit Shows You How To Tear Gadgets Apart
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