Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Could I get my current BlackBerry fixed? The rep shook his head
sadly. “They don’t let us repair the phones in the store anymore,”
he said. “That was my favorite part of the job. Now all I get to do is
sell phones.”
When I arrived home, I dug out my old BlackBerry. Two and a half
years earlier, I had marveled at its slick design and state-of-theart
“world phone” capability. Now it just looked thick and clunky. And
what would I do without its previously special ability to make calls
from other countries without swapping out a computer chip? It
didn’t matter since virtually every phone can do that now. I googled
my model number to see if I could find a more affordable
replacement. What I stumbled onto instead was a short video on
YouTube. The video showed a pair of hands disassembling a
BlackBerry and replacing the screen in a matter of minutes. A male
voice, with an appealingly clipped English accent, guided me
through each step.
I was hooked.
Just ten minutes after starting the process, I powered it up. Good as
new.
But there is no guarantee that the best ideas will ever be realized,
much less filter into the marketplace. That’s because too many
average people are discouraged from ever opening these gadgets
and examining how they work. Of course, large manufacturers
would prefer that we simply toss them out and replace them with
something shiny and new. That’s just the nature of capitalism.