When I heard about a “Right to Repair” executive order from the president, I was all for it — this theoretical thing.
It’s easy for any of us to understand from where comes the impetus for such a proposal in the current age of stuff.
After eons of making stuff and just plain having stuff, we are used to ownership equaling the right to tinker.
If you are handy, that is. If I had a hammer, I would be likely to make matters worse. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” was not written about me, although I loved the idea of disassembling something and laying out its parts on a clean white sheet and putting them back together, better!
I have friends who rebuilt their Beetle engines when we were young and continue to mend and improve the bicycles and back gates in their lives.
Me, I used to change tires on the side of the road back when tires used to blow, and once even replaced all four fuel injectors in my car when I was poor and in college. That was the moment of peak repair for me.
Come to think of it, most of my best friends are very handy indeed. They are contractors and artists. My wife is an architect who has the right to repair in our own household and, by God, she can handle a monkey wrench with grace and aplomb.
I mentioned the Right to Repair order to a friend who is handy. He grew up on a farm in Tennessee, and he immediately launched into a diatribe against the corporate demons who tell the John Deere tractor owner whose rig broke down in the fields: “Sorry, bub, you’ve got to get that complex machine back to the dealer, as you mere mortals aren’t equipped to understand its intricacies.”
Then I looked up Joe Biden’s actual executive order. According to Fortune, the president is “asking the Federal Trade Commission to force tech companies to let consumers repair their own devices — or use the technician of their choice — instead of having to use authorized repair technicians. … The President wants to require large manufacturers — including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, John Deere, General Electric, and Tesla — to make available to everyone their repair manuals, tools, and components and parts, as well as proprietary software code that allows components to function.”
Problem is, tractors aren’t built the way they used to be. Like everything else, they’re basically rolling computers. And computers have a bunch of proprietary chips and code in them.
So here’s what Big Tractor says: While it will sell you spare mechanical parts, “John Deere does not support the right to modify embedded software due to risks associated with the safe operation of the equipment, emissions compliance and engine performance.”
That’s the thing. Once I pried the screen off my iPhone, I wouldn’t have — my handy friends wouldn’t have — the vaguest idea how to trouble-shoot that puppy. Same, apparently, with a John Deere.
So, I don’t know — it’s not as simple as our having the right to repair what we own. It’s about things being really complicated, and not in a mechanical way. That car in your driveway doesn’t need a tuneup anymore. You don’t diagnose its troubles by popping the hood — your mechanic plugs in a computer that talks to the car’s computers and they suss out what’s wrong.
But let’s hold on to some simple things as well. A couple of years ago I went to the Pasadena Repair Cafe, a grassroots effort that brought together broken stuff and great tinkerers.
“I can’t believe the guy who built the Mars Rover just repaired my electric shaver!” said a happy client.
I second that emotion, Luddite though it may be, and wish, in a way, for simpler stuff.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.
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July 25, 2021 at 10:02PM
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A right to repair and a wish for simplicity - The Pasadena Star-News
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