In this day in age businesses have sprung up to sell you any kind of thing you could ever think of. Need a blanket with sleeves? We got it. Wanna play battleship with someone in China? No problem. How about a robot that vacuums your floor? Check aaaand mate. Basically whatever you can think of, someone is marketing it and selling it. I mean…let’s not get super sci-fi here, we don’t have flying DeLoreans and you’re still(unbelievably)more likely to be struck by lightning then to be attacked by a giant hologram of a great white shark.
One thing I’ve notice when trying to look at the grand scheme of things is there appears to be two main types of business; I think the best way to categorize those is with “Producers” and “Fixers”. Producers obviously create something, they produce a product that’s sweet/awesome and you want to own it. You run to the store the day it comes out and drool through the plate glass window, wishing you were the annoying little kid screaming at his mom to hurry up and pay for his new treasure. Fixers come into the picture long after you’ve ripped open the package and put some mileage on your new product.
Fast Forward 6 months, this kid has somehow lodged his Wii-mote in the ceiling fan. He doesn’t realize how delicate the internal workings of this wonderful product are, so he pulls it out of the ceiling fan and tries to fire up another round of Wii Sports Tennis. Kid isn’t getting any love from his Wii-Mote, it’s smoking a little even, certainly broken. He decides he should get on the horn with an expert and see how badly he’s mucked this one, he calls “Tim’s Nintendo Wii and Ceiling Fan Repair Emporium” for advice. Tim makes it clear that “bro, if your Wii-mote was stuck in the ceiling fan it’s toast and prob time to scoop up new one.” The kid is furious, he’s 12 years old, has no money, and his family has been injured by his over-zealous Zelda slashes enough times to know that replacing the Wii-Mote is not in their best interests.
What can this kid do? He’s totally boned at this point right? His options are limited to purchase a new device, or quit playing. 100 years ago this situation would not have existed for two reasons: The first is obvious, this technology didn’t exist, sure, whatever, here’s your gold star. The second is my point; this device is so specific and carefully tuned over years of research and development that there isn’t much chance that this kid has the 10 years of practical electrician experience required to work on the Wii-Mote under his belt.
Here we are, full circle, producers and fixers. I feel like this divide is most apparent in two industries, the automotive industry and computer industry. There are no other items in history that have been used on such a huge level as these two, yet has they both have a user base that has little to no idea exactly HOW these machines work. There are always a few things with each that are painfully obvious, tires are filled with air, you can maintain that by refilling or emptying air out of them periodically. Easy. Computers need to be updated with the latest software so they can function and interact with other computers and systems via the internet. In most cases your operating system will take care of that for you, but what about stand alone programs or driver software? Those typically will not update without a little human intervention, even as simple as checking a box that says “update automatically”, you still MUST check that box for it to work. Also easy, no problem right? What about bigger, long term maintenance? Could you flush the transmission fluid and give it a nice rinse cleaning any particles that may have accumulated over the last few years? I seriously doubt it. This isn’t meant to be offensive to anyone, (“hey dummy, you don’t know how ur stuff workz LOLs”) I know I don’t have the tools or know how to flush my transmission fluid.
So that’s what it comes back to, either you don’t have the tools to accomplish such a feat, or you don’t have the training. I feel like business’ more and more often are creating this situation even more heavily as time goes on. Do you have a newish car? Ever looked under the hood? Chances are if it’s newer than 2007 you can’t even SEE the engine. You see a sleek looking plastic plate shaped like the top of an engine with the producer of the cars name etched in fancy chrome lettering. Go run that same test on a car older than 1999, it’s a mess of wires, belts and rubber tubes, the guts of your vehicle. It feels like more and more business’ are discouraging you from being your own Fixer, duh, they want you to use their fixer! Or at least a fixer that has studied their rigorous training course and has passed their expectations. This can be good and bad, you know for a fact that there are experts with excellent knowledge bases, but it’s going to cost you. Expertise does not come cheap my friend. So where do we go from here? Will there be a grass roots movement demanding producers make it easier on the general public to fix and maintain their own devices and machines? Probably not. The best we can do is educate ourselves, the beautiful part is now the producers have taken all of the responsibility of being fixers out of our hands. When something goes wrong, we have every right to call them…screaming.
