
Gambiarra: repair culture (2015) - mat_jack1
https://efeefe-arquivo.github.io/livro/repair-culture/gambiarra/
======
sly010
This resonates with me a lot.

My father is an old school car mechanic in eastern europe who (at least while
i was young) hoarded all kinds of things and reused/repurposed them. I
inherited his mentality. At some point he partnered up with a guy and they
started their own business. His partner is more of a capitalist. He would run
the computer diagnostics on the car, replace whatever the computer says is
broken without much root cause analysis, then the old parts are thrown out.
This gets repeated until the car runs. They make money on each part. The
insurance company pays and everyone is happy. My dad's quality of life is
better. He has a weekend house now. He sometimes complains how in the old days
one would really fix things instead of replacing them, but he is getting older
and not in a position change how the world works.

My own story is playing out a very similar way and I am constantly struggling
to decide what is the right thing to do and what kind of person I want to be.
Most people of my age (especially in the US) don't even think about these
things though.

Edit: formatting.

~~~
ineedasername
It's not always easy to find the right balance. I've worked in the same place
for obout 15 years. Earlier on, encountering limits of old legacy systems, I
frequently spent lots of time finding creative work arounds in coding and
automating. But over the years these have become less tenable, since I'm only
one person, and home grown solutions without dedicated resources are a bigger
risk to operations than purchasing a mediocre off the shelf product.

------
personlurking
Never thought I'd see the word Gambiarra at the top of HN. By the way,
Portugal has a word with a bit of a similar meaning
([https://i.imgur.com/7YHjJHs.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/7YHjJHs.jpg))

For anyone interested in how Cubans do it, I recommend this 8 min video from
Motherboard (it has subtitles):

> In 1991, Cuba's economy began to implode. "The Special Period in the Time of
> Peace" was the government's euphemism for what was a culmination of 30 years
> worth of isolation. It began in the 60s, with engineers leaving Cuba for
> America. Ernesto Oroza, a designer and artist, studied the innovations
> created during this period. He found that the general population had created
> homespun, Frankenstein-like machines for their survival, made from everyday
> objects. Oroza began to collect these machines, and would later
> contextualize it as "art" in a movement he dubbed "Technological
> Disobedience."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-XS4aueDUg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-XS4aueDUg)

~~~
rasz
Mighty Car Mods did 'THE CARS OF CUBA' Special

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJPqe1baowA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJPqe1baowA)

they got paid to do fast and furious promotion, but instead concentrated on
Cuban ingenuity when it comes to fixing cars without replacement parts. What
you see in the episode (30-50 year old cars held together with ducttape) is
not that far off from what was the norm in Eastern bloc under Russian
occupation.

------
efeefe
Hey all, thanks for the attention and comments. A slightly updated version of
this text was published in Tvergastein (walled garden version here -
[https://www.academia.edu/20808625/Gambiarra_Repair_Culture](https://www.academia.edu/20808625/Gambiarra_Repair_Culture)
, anyone interested in the PDF please let me know). And indeed, I have not
explored that the "repair" side of it that much. More recently, I've been
trying to think of "transformation of matter" to frame a wider field that
would encompass digital making, arts & crafts, repair, maintenance,
customization and others. I wrote another two texts last year while
researching that perspective: Transformed Worlds
([https://medium.com/@felipefonseca/transformed-
worlds-9a6bd7c...](https://medium.com/@felipefonseca/transformed-
worlds-9a6bd7c44e8e) ) and Knowledge, Skill and Labor
([https://medium.com/@felipefonseca/knowledge-skill-and-
labor-...](https://medium.com/@felipefonseca/knowledge-skill-and-
labor-1c8f5d89a1b4) ). I'd love to read everyone's thoughts on those as well.
(Felipe Fonseca / [http://efeefe.me](http://efeefe.me) )

------
Animats
PC recycling and repair is alive and well in the US. The SF Bay Area has the
Computer Repair Center.[1] In Shenzhen, as was discussed on here, there's an
active phone recycling culture, with people doing chip-level replacement on
iPhones.

PC recycling was easier in the desktop era, where you could take a pile of
discarded PCs and swap around boards, hard drives, cases, and power supplies
until you had something that worked. All you really needed was a screwdriver.
Laptops are tougher, but still repairable without too many special tools and
training.

Mobile phone repair takes special skills, training, equpment, and parts, all
of which are available.[2] Third-party iPhone parts are available. I'm amazed
that people are doing SMD board rework in small repair shops, but they are.

[1] [http://www.crc.org/](http://www.crc.org/) [2]
[https://stsparts.us/](https://stsparts.us/)

------
leovonl
Having grown up in Brazil, where computers and parts are expensive - and in a
time where the country was recovering from a galloping inflation and a failed
attempt from the government to cut it back by freezing everyone's saving
accounts - I can very strongly relate to this.

In fact, I think most brazilians of my generation which share same taste for
building things are used to prototyping things with "a lot of duct tape" and
reusing parts by disassembling unused/old toys, small machines/appliances,
etc, and reusing what they can to make something new.

About the "gambiarra" term, it has a lot of connotations associated (some
bad), but it also carries an idea of "subverting the original intent of the
designer" or "subverting the intended usage of the parts/pieces". Which is why
it fits perfectly in the idea of "hacking" for repurposing and recycling.

~~~
fiatjaf
The term "gambiarra" should always come with its related "bambo", which means
floppy, or not solid enough.

------
rl12345
Ha, when I read the post title I knew it would come from a (Brazilian)
Portuguese author.

The way I would explain "Gambiarra": it's a quick fix that relies heavily on
an ad hoc solution instead of following the generally accepted principles for
solving a problem.

~~~
zorked
Accurately translated in English as "hack".

~~~
rl12345
Where I come from, "Gambiarra" sometimes has a bad connotation -- in the sense
that it was not well thought. So, maybe, a lazy hack?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
English _hack_ is very much the same. Only in the computer / hobby usage sense
does _hack_ mean skilful or clever. The opposite being the _engineered
solution_ , opposite in the computer / hobby sense in that _engineered_ often
means _over engineered_ and not fun.

From
[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/hack?s=t](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/hack?s=t)

 _hack_ , verb

1\. to cut, notch, slice, chop, or sever (something) with or as with heavy,
irregular blows (often followed by up or down): to hack meat; to hack down
trees.

2\. to break up the surface of (the ground).

3\. to clear (a road, path, etc.) by cutting away vines, trees, brush, or the
like: They hacked a trail through the jungle.

4\. to damage or injure by crude, harsh, or insensitive treatment; mutilate;
mangle: The editor hacked the story to bits.

5\. to reduce or cut ruthlessly; trim: The Senate hacked the budget severely
before returning it to the House.

6\. Slang. to deal or cope with; handle: He can't hack all this commuting.

7\. Computers:

a. to modify (a computer program or electronic device) or write (a program) in
a skillful or clever way: Developers have hacked the app. I hacked my tablet
to do some very cool things.

b. to circumvent security and break into (a network, computer, file, etc.),
usually with malicious intent: Criminals hacked the bank's servers yesterday.

------
hardbaloney
This speaks to a disparity between the first and second (and third) worlds
(and yes, I know that these are outdated terms); in the US writ large, we take
it technology for granted, and have been marketed to thusly; as such, our
products are disposable, obsolescence is as much about culture as it is about
cycles of technology, and we are marketed to as such.

Go further afield, and tech cultures spring up around technology we'd
otherwise take for granted in the Anglosphere. Sure, there's some cultural
cachet around old 'things,' but to my cynical mind, it's cachet for the sake
of cachet. The label of useless is applied to last generation's gear, and it's
thrown out, recycled, or stuck in a drawer.

If only we had a more open and less, shall we say capitalist/IP-based view of
our technology, we could create an ecosystem where 2012's iPhone, with ample
computing power for many tasks, could become a valuable part of said ecosystem
instead of being a relic. Similarly, instead of trashing broken things, we
could repair them; there exist almost a stigma surrounding a broken phone
screen. Why repair when you're due for an upgrade in a few months? Don't be so
base as to actually fix your shit, that's not what you're being sold; upgrade,
advance, incrementalize.

------
mat_jack1
Felipe Fonseca's critical thoughts about the last 10-15 years of the "makers"
movement.

Very insightful reading how the general culture of the movement has changed
from a repair-reuse-recycle to a prototype-industrial-capitalistic mentality.

~~~
brudgers
Looks like it is from 2015 since it mentions the Obama administration in the
current tense.

~~~
goshx
Yes, the date is there: 08/03/2015 (that's March 8th)

------
jackfoxy
From the title I was hoping to read more about a repair culture such as Bunny
Huang discusses when he talks about the possibility of _legacy electronics_ in
his latest book _The Hardware Hacker_. Of course I have had computers repaired
from time to time, and even put life back into an old stereo receiver and
analog television, but generally in the developed world the economics of buy
new vs repair keep repair culture on the fringe, not just with electronics.

------
digi_owl
VC discovered the "makers" hype, and things turned "weird"...

~~~
ivanbakel
Because anything against capitalist thought gets mulched up, repackaged, and
spat out. If you can commodify being a maker, you take away from the people
who are actually subverting basic consumer thinking.

I think we're seeing the same problem in the modern form of the "gig economy"
versus what people initially idealised for a freer, less contractual
workforce.

~~~
digi_owl
[https://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-
sociopaths](https://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-sociopaths)

~~~
hkon
That was a good read on a saturday.

------
solidsnack9000

        When the maker culture becomes eminently entrepreneurial,
        we should wonder what mechanisms are set into motion. It
        may as well be the old capitalist drive to turn the
        critique to itself into the gears of its own reinvention
        gaining ground. Could we ever escape that path?
    

Lately when I read things like this I wonder, how are the people in the
movement -- whatever movement -- supposed to make a living without being
entrepreneurial?

~~~
cfelix
It's not about being able to make a living, it's about how much do we really
need to make a living.

~~~
solidsnack9000
Things seem kind of bimodal there, though. If you're part of a new technology
or movement, generally there aren't any stable jobs with retirement plans. So
someone has to get entrepreneurial...and then they are CEO.

------
alex_duf
Probably a good thread to mention the fairphone
[http://fairphone.com/](http://fairphone.com/)

Not the prettiest phone but it does what it says on the box/ it's easy to fix
it yourself

~~~
Numberwang
My friend has one of these. Sadly it has really bad build quality and he has
been on call to their support over and over.

