Creator of "Dirty Jobs" Mike Rowe testifies to Congress
This is something I've thought about in the last year or two as well. We have a culture of "buy", not "fix". In part, this is because we've had a very rich 60 years. In part, this is because things are cheap. In part, because factories design things that are not designed for repair by customers.The reality is, we can't fix a busted capacitor, a scratched CD, or a damaged microchip.  Nor do we have the equipment and spare materials ready to hand to weld cracked plastic. Super Glue is it, and not a very good it.Whereas, we can fix wood, and with some work, manage metal. Earth can be munged around.Cars are designed to be maintained, unlike computer hardware (especially our Macs :-( ).So in a culture where by the nature of the things we use, we can not trivially repair them - we leave off the ideas of repair, and prefer the idea of replace.This is a problem, because we are more than consumers, more than robots being pipe-fed from the wells of other people's industry.H.G. Wells' conception of the time traveller always hangs around in my head when this sort of discussion arises.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine