The Repair Shop 2049 : Mending Things and Mobilising the Solarpunk Aesthetic

Stead, Michael and Macpherson-Pope, Thomas and Coulton, Paul (2022) The Repair Shop 2049 : Mending Things and Mobilising the Solarpunk Aesthetic. Branch (EIT Climate KIC, Mozilla Foundation, Climate Action Tech, and the Green Web Foundation) (4).

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Abstract

The current Right-to-Repair legislation allows Big Tech – the likes of Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google – to maintain dominion when it comes to Internet of Things (IoT) product maintenance, rather than helping to foster innovative, more open, citizen-oriented cultures of repair. The firms still control replacement part supply chains and repair services for IoT. Given the UK’s political fealty to laissez-faire economics, it is unsurprising that there has also been no national Right-to-Repair awareness campaign, no government review of Big Tech’s repair hegemony, and, though admittedly more extreme, no rationing of the consumption of ‘smart’ devices – despite the IoT’s damning e-waste and material scarcity credentials. In response to such inaction, The Repair Shop 2049 project was born. This essay outlines how the project has sought to challenge the limitations of the current legislation by mobilising the solarpunk aesthetic to co-design resilient IoT repair futures.