When my soon-to-be brother-in-law first visited our new flat last year, he asked me about the kind of roller shutters we had installed, if they were electrically operated and if I could activate them remotely. I told him that the real estate developer had stuck to manual levers to keep the cost down as much as possible, but we could, if we wanted, easily add a little motor on the side.
But I told him that I preferred this manual system anyway. If one day I can’t open or close the shutters, I will know where the problem comes from: a mechanical issue with the roller.
Nicolas Magand
An upcoming issue of Good Work is focused on “Machines,” and it strikes me that the ability to see the mechanics involved is part of a machine’s appeal. Modern devices—especially “smart” devices—tend to hide the machinery, either by design or because they’re so complex, which makes them impossible to tinker with. And, as Matthew Crawford taught us in Shop Class as Soul Craft, tinkering with stuff is a human instinct. “We want to feel that our world is intelligible,” he says, “so we can be responsible for it.”
In books and movies from the twentieth century, people are always fixing stuff themselves—cars, toasters, space ships. Fifty years later, when tech has crept into even more aspects of our lives, tinkering, let alone fixing, feels almost impossible. You can’t see the problem, so you can’t understand the problem, so you don’t feel responsible for the problem. But lack of responsibility is uncomfortable. We want to feel responsible. Responsibility is good for us.
(In his post, Nicolas also links to a post called “My Coffee Maker Just Makes Coffee” by Bradley Taunt. Also worth a skim.)
Christian Leithart 