The Restart Project Podcast

In our first monthly Restart Podcast of the year, Dave talks to Leyla Acaroglu: self-described designer, systems thinker and sustainability provocateur. Leyla's energy is contagious as she talks us through her methods for designing not just useful and effective products, but also new systems and social conventions. Having grown frustrated with the ways in which traditional education prioritises linear thinking, Leyla founded the Unschool of Disruptive Design. Within this framework, she teaches systems thinking: a way of looking at the world that acknowledges its interconnectedness. This idea has its roots in The Gaia Theory, which sees earth as a synergistic, self-regulating, complex system made up of both living beings and inorganic substances. For Leyla, systems thinking enables a fierce optimism in the face of some of the world's most challenging issues: celebrating the complexity of the societies we have build, she argues that every problem holds its own solution. This means that designers have an important role as change-makers: but only if they learn to think creatively and holistically. She explains how optimism and outrage are not mutually exclusive, reflecting on some of her experiences as a young woman in Australia that drove her to do what she currently does. Leyla is concerned by the normalisation of unethical practises in design, but she sees huge potential for its revival as a force for good, or 'silent social scripter': "We need people pushing at the boundaries of what it means to create things in the world, and what it means to deliver functionality to humans, and what it means to influence desire". Leyla was one of our Keynote speakers at last year's Fixfest: a global gathering for community repair. She talks about the connections between design and repair, and how repairers are often natural system thinkers. We share her confidence that more dialogue between these two closely related industries would lead to a world where people think more deeply about what they are creating, why, and who for.

In our first monthly Restart Podcast of the year, Dave talks to Leyla Acaroglu: self-described designer, systems thinker and sustainability provocateur. Leyla's energy is contagious as she talks us through her methods for designing not just useful and effective products, but also new systems and social conventions. Having grown frustrated with the ways in which traditional education prioritises linear thinking, Leyla founded the Unschool of Disruptive Design. Within this framework, she teaches systems thinking: a way of looking at the world that acknowledges its interconnectedness. This idea has its roots in The Gaia Theory, which sees earth as a synergistic, self-regulating, complex system made up of both living beings and inorganic substances. For Leyla, systems thinking enables a fierce optimism in the face of some of the world's most challenging issues: celebrating the complexity of the societies we have build, she argues that every problem holds its own solution. This means that designers have an important role as change-makers: but only if they learn to think creatively and holistically. She explains how optimism and outrage are not mutually exclusive, reflecting on some of her experiences as a young woman in Australia that drove her to do what she currently does. Leyla is concerned by the normalisation of unethical practises in design, but she sees huge potential for its revival as a force for good, or 'silent social scripter': "We need people pushing at the boundaries of what it means to create things in the world, and what it means to deliver functionality to humans, and what it means to influence desire". Leyla was one of our Keynote speakers at last year's Fixfest: a global gathering for community repair. She talks about the connections between design and repair, and how repairers are often natural system thinkers. We share her confidence that more dialogue between these two closely related industries would lead to a world where people think more deeply about what they are creating, why, and who for.

In our first radio show of 2018, we cover a range of topics: from learning about modularity through flatpack electronics, to the recent Apple battery scandal, to the even more recent news concerning Spectre and Meltdown: two recently discovered flaws that mean owners of electronic products everywhere are facing major vulnerabilities. Ugo and Restarter Panda Méry are joined by Janet to discuss the use of kit-style electronics as educational materials, in schools and in the home. Building on the legacy of LEGO and other building games, the idea of teaching electronic repair and design early on is starting to catch on. As a complement to the surge in programmes that seek to teach kids how to code, products such as Kano and Pi-top also aim to demonstrate the worth of understanding how hardware works. There are differences in the way we engage with items we have built ourselves, which is evident across a wide range of ages. Products that come as a kit that must be constructed help us to understand the benefits of modularity, as well as encouraging life-cycle thinking that places each product within a broader social and environmental context. And Kano has shown real attention to this, in providing a reuse project for its “obsolete” first generation. The sense of ownership and control that we gain from building things ourselves stands in sharp contrast to some of the current models of electronic gadgets, where users feel locked out of the knowledge they need to use their products effectively. This has been highlighted by the recent scandal concerning Apple’s admission that it has released updates that purposely slow down the iPhone 6 when its battery is wearing down. As Panda explains, the problem is not with the updates themselves, which in fact do extend the usability of phones that might otherwise shut down. Instead, it is a problem of transparency, communication and trust, which points to the need for manufacturers to involve users in the repair and maintenance of their gadgets. Finally, we touch briefly on Spectre and Meltdown, two major flaws affecting processors (CPUs) that have recently come to light. They affect nearly all computer products and operating systems made in the last 20 years, and as yet, no fully effective fix has been discovered. We suggest that all smartphone and computer users should update their browsers and operating systems as soon as possible to minimise vulnerability. Links: * Technology Will Save Us * Pi-Top * Kano * Lomography Konstruktor DIY camera * The Repairable Flatpack Toaster (only a concept) * NY Times: Is Apple Slowing Down Old iPhones? Questions and Answers * The Hacker News: How to protect your devices against Spectre and Meltdown Attacks  

In our first radio show of 2018, we cover a range of topics: from learning about modularity through flatpack electronics, to the recent Apple battery scandal, to the even more recent news concerning Spectre and Meltdown: two recently discovered flaws that mean owners of electronic products everywhere are facing major vulnerabilities. Ugo and Restarter Panda Méry are joined by Janet to discuss the use of kit-style electronics as educational materials, in schools and in the home. Building on the legacy of LEGO and other building games, the idea of teaching electronic repair and design early on is starting to catch on. As a complement to the surge in programmes that seek to teach kids how to code, products such as Kano and Pi-top also aim to demonstrate the worth of understanding how hardware works. There are differences in the way we engage with items we have built ourselves, which is evident across a wide range of ages. Products that come as a kit that must be constructed help us to understand the benefits of modularity, as well as encouraging life-cycle thinking that places each product within a broader social and environmental context. And Kano has shown real attention to this, in providing a reuse project for its “obsolete” first generation. The sense of ownership and control that we gain from building things ourselves stands in sharp contrast to some of the current models of electronic gadgets, where users feel locked out of the knowledge they need to use their products effectively. This has been highlighted by the recent scandal concerning Apple’s admission that it has released updates that purposely slow down the iPhone 6 when its battery is wearing down. As Panda explains, the problem is not with the updates themselves, which in fact do extend the usability of phones that might otherwise shut down. Instead, it is a problem of transparency, communication and trust, which points to the need for manufacturers to involve users in the repair and maintenance of their gadgets. Finally, we touch briefly on Spectre and Meltdown, two major flaws affecting processors (CPUs) that have recently come to light. They affect nearly all computer products and operating systems made in the last 20 years, and as yet, no fully effective fix has been discovered. We suggest that all smartphone and computer users should update their browsers and operating systems as soon as possible to minimise vulnerability. Links: * Technology Will Save Us * Pi-Top * Kano * Lomography Konstruktor DIY camera * The Repairable Flatpack Toaster (only a concept) * NY Times: Is Apple Slowing Down Old iPhones? Questions and Answers * The Hacker News: How to protect your devices against Spectre and Meltdown Attacks  

The soaring value of Bitcoin has been all over the media recently. But what is Bitcoin, and especially what is the environmental cost of 'mining' it? Bitcoin is the largest of a series of emerging 'cryptocurrencies' - forms of digital currency that operate by way of decentralized networks. Because users are not identified by their name, but instead by their 'public key', they originally attracted media attention as a means of conducting illegal business. Now, however, the enormous profit made by those who invested at Bitcoin's birth has drawn in more mainstream attention. What makes cryptocurrency distinct from other banking systems is that it uses 'peer to peer' transactions, which are validated by the community, rather than by a central body. The technology behind it is the 'Blockchain' - which is essentially a public ledger of all transactions ever made. Sets of transactions are validated in 'blocks', and then added to the chain. The process of mining new bitcoin is actually the process of validating blocks of transactions, which requires miners - or groups of miners - to compete to solve a complex mathematical problem. When the problem is solved, the winning miner is rewarded with bitcoin, and the block is added to the blockchain. The intensely complicated system by which Bitcoin works has meant that the discussion surrounding it has tended to be dominated by those who understand it: usually, this means investors. But the growing phenomenon of cryptocurrencies is not just relevant to people who have bought bitcoin - it is relevant to all of us. At Restart, we're interested in the environmental impact of technological systems - including those that are all but invisible. The internet, for example, is something that people rarely think of as having any material reality. But as we explored in a previous podcast episode, the data centres that power the internet involve huge amounts of hardware that require large amounts of energy to both manufacture and to power. Bitcoin, far from being an immaterial currency, has a real environmental footprint. This is because huge amounts of energy are required to solve the complex mathematical problems in order for miners to add a block of transactions to the blockchain. It is based on probability, so the larger the number of computers working at it at once, the more chance the miners have of "winning" Bitcoin. As Bitcoins value increases, so does the difficulty of this problem, and so does the energy that is being poured into solving it. The very language used to describe Bitcoin - involving 'blocks' and 'miners' - points to the real material processes that underpin its highly unpredictable operating processes. There are many estimates floating around about the total environmental impact of the entire Bitcoin network - some say that it is as great as the entire country of Denmark, and set to increase. Not to mention other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, which are using similarly ludicrous amounts of power. Like traditional internet data centres, these mines also require huge amounts of energy to cool, and equipment is discarded often in favour of newer models with higher processing power. Estimates about their energy consumption, then, must also be considered in light of their embodied impact: the resources going into manufacturing the hardware itself. Some supporters of Bitcoin praise it as a disruptive technology with the potential to undermine the banking systems that have come increasingly under scrutiny. But we wonder whether its decentralised format is destined to remain that way. The fact that these networks are dependent on such large amounts of power may result in their increased centralization, as more and more mines crop up in areas where electricity is cheap and abundant. Additionally, while some projects aim to address Bitcoin's power co...

The soaring value of Bitcoin has been all over the media recently. But what is Bitcoin, and especially what is the environmental cost of 'mining' it? Bitcoin is the largest of a series of emerging 'cryptocurrencies' - forms of digital currency that operate by way of decentralized networks. Because users are not identified by their name, but instead by their 'public key', they originally attracted media attention as a means of conducting illegal business. Now, however, the enormous profit made by those who invested at Bitcoin's birth has drawn in more mainstream attention. What makes cryptocurrency distinct from other banking systems is that it uses 'peer to peer' transactions, which are validated by the community, rather than by a central body. The technology behind it is the 'Blockchain' - which is essentially a public ledger of all transactions ever made. Sets of transactions are validated in 'blocks', and then added to the chain. The process of mining new bitcoin is actually the process of validating blocks of transactions, which requires miners - or groups of miners - to compete to solve a complex mathematical problem. When the problem is solved, the winning miner is rewarded with bitcoin, and the block is added to the blockchain. The intensely complicated system by which Bitcoin works has meant that the discussion surrounding it has tended to be dominated by those who understand it: usually, this means investors. But the growing phenomenon of cryptocurrencies is not just relevant to people who have bought bitcoin - it is relevant to all of us. At Restart, we're interested in the environmental impact of technological systems - including those that are all but invisible. The internet, for example, is something that people rarely think of as having any material reality. But as we explored in a previous podcast episode, the data centres that power the internet involve huge amounts of hardware that require large amounts of energy to both manufacture and to power. Bitcoin, far from being an immaterial currency, has a real environmental footprint. This is because huge amounts of energy are required to solve the complex mathematical problems in order for miners to add a block of transactions to the blockchain. It is based on probability, so the larger the number of computers working at it at once, the more chance the miners have of "winning" Bitcoin. As Bitcoins value increases, so does the difficulty of this problem, and so does the energy that is being poured into solving it. The very language used to describe Bitcoin - involving 'blocks' and 'miners' - points to the real material processes that underpin its highly unpredictable operating processes. There are many estimates floating around about the total environmental impact of the entire Bitcoin network - some say that it is as great as the entire country of Denmark, and set to increase. Not to mention other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, which are using similarly ludicrous amounts of power. Like traditional internet data centres, these mines also require huge amounts of energy to cool, and equipment is discarded often in favour of newer models with higher processing power. Estimates about their energy consumption, then, must also be considered in light of their embodied impact: the resources going into manufacturing the hardware itself. Some supporters of Bitcoin praise it as a disruptive technology with the potential to undermine the banking systems that have come increasingly under scrutiny. But we wonder whether its decentralised format is destined to remain that way. The fact that these networks are dependent on such large amounts of power may result in their increased centralization, as more and more mines crop up in areas where electricity is cheap and abundant. Additionally, while some projects aim to address Bitcoin's power co...

In the lead up to Christmas, commuters around London are being bombarded with advertisements for voice-controlled home assistants - in particular the Amazon Echo. Today, we talk about the business model behind the device, our concerns about the rate of its sales, and the questions that the Echo raises about who benefits in the future of machine learning. The Amazon Echo bears many similarities to its main competitor, the Google Home. Both respond to a 'wake' word - which in the case of the Echo, is set by default to 'Alexa', a female-voiced assistant who acts as a search engine, can purchase items for you, add items to your calendar, and send commands to other 'smart' or connected devices. Having been a popular item in the US for a couple of years, Amazon brought the Echo (and the newer, smaller Dot) to the UK market last year, but it's now pushing it with season-specific advertising. With the voice-controlled speaker system recently made available for purchase in over 80 new countries around the world including in India, the number of Echos in homes is set to increase. Amazon has built an open platform for developers: anyone can create a 'skill' for Alexa to be distributed via Amazon. The result of this is that Alexa now has over 15,000 'skills' (which can range from turning on your central heating system to finding the 'perfect christmas playlist'). Unlike Apple products, where the software platform is inextricably tied to the hardware, hardware developers can harness the power of Amazon's platform. As just a vessel for Amazon's software, the hardware itself loses apparent value, and we wonder how many of these speakers will be soon discarded in favour of a new model. Like the Amazon Kindle, the Amazon voice-controlled assistants are suspiciously cheap. This rings alarm bells for several reasons, and not just because it tends to demotivate repair. We've learned that as a rule of thumb on the internet, when you're not paying (much) for the product, you are the product. Consumers of voice controlled assistants are paying, in part, with their voices. In order for voice recognition to work with different intonations and accents, manufacturers need a huge database of voices and to employ 'deep learning' techniques. These are expensive and time-consuming. But with Echos distributed all over the world, Amazon doesn't have to collect voices - Alexa does it for them. Another more troubling implication of this business model is that Amazon - and Google, with its personal assistants both on mobile and the home - are collecting vast amounts of data from consumers. While you can configure these devices to some degree, for them to be effective, personal assistants are always listening. What will this data be used for? Personal assistants grow 'smarter' as they collect information about their users - but it's actually the companies that own the platforms that have the most to learn. While we may feel like we are in a position of control when we give commands such as 'Alexa, add mince pies to my shopping list', are we in fact relinquishing control with every tidbit of data on our interests, habits and personal lives that is sent up into the cloud? Beyond personal data, what will be the consequence of a handful of large companies possessing so much more data and using AI to learn about behaviour of people, predicting wants and desires? We discuss some open source alternatives - including Mycroft and Mozilla's Common Voice - with greater transparency and data protection. We'll be closely following this topic as it develops: voice-controlled assistants are undoubtedly useful for many things, but we need to make sure that we are active participants in shaping the kind of future that we want to live in.

In the lead up to Christmas, commuters around London are being bombarded with advertisements for voice-controlled home assistants - in particular the Amazon Echo. Today, we talk about the business model behind the device, our concerns about the rate of its sales, and the questions that the Echo raises about who benefits in the future of machine learning. The Amazon Echo bears many similarities to its main competitor, the Google Home. Both respond to a 'wake' word - which in the case of the Echo, is set by default to 'Alexa', a female-voiced assistant who acts as a search engine, can purchase items for you, add items to your calendar, and send commands to other 'smart' or connected devices. Having been a popular item in the US for a couple of years, Amazon brought the Echo (and the newer, smaller Dot) to the UK market last year, but it's now pushing it with season-specific advertising. With the voice-controlled speaker system recently made available for purchase in over 80 new countries around the world including in India, the number of Echos in homes is set to increase. Amazon has built an open platform for developers: anyone can create a 'skill' for Alexa to be distributed via Amazon. The result of this is that Alexa now has over 15,000 'skills' (which can range from turning on your central heating system to finding the 'perfect christmas playlist'). Unlike Apple products, where the software platform is inextricably tied to the hardware, hardware developers can harness the power of Amazon's platform. As just a vessel for Amazon's software, the hardware itself loses apparent value, and we wonder how many of these speakers will be soon discarded in favour of a new model. Like the Amazon Kindle, the Amazon voice-controlled assistants are suspiciously cheap. This rings alarm bells for several reasons, and not just because it tends to demotivate repair. We've learned that as a rule of thumb on the internet, when you're not paying (much) for the product, you are the product. Consumers of voice controlled assistants are paying, in part, with their voices. In order for voice recognition to work with different intonations and accents, manufacturers need a huge database of voices and to employ 'deep learning' techniques. These are expensive and time-consuming. But with Echos distributed all over the world, Amazon doesn't have to collect voices - Alexa does it for them. Another more troubling implication of this business model is that Amazon - and Google, with its personal assistants both on mobile and the home - are collecting vast amounts of data from consumers. While you can configure these devices to some degree, for them to be effective, personal assistants are always listening. What will this data be used for? Personal assistants grow 'smarter' as they collect information about their users - but it's actually the companies that own the platforms that have the most to learn. While we may feel like we are in a position of control when we give commands such as 'Alexa, add mince pies to my shopping list', are we in fact relinquishing control with every tidbit of data on our interests, habits and personal lives that is sent up into the cloud? Beyond personal data, what will be the consequence of a handful of large companies possessing so much more data and using AI to learn about behaviour of people, predicting wants and desires? We discuss some open source alternatives - including Mycroft and Mozilla's Common Voice - with greater transparency and data protection. We'll be closely following this topic as it develops: voice-controlled assistants are undoubtedly useful for many things, but we need to make sure that we are active participants in shaping the kind of future that we want to live in.

You can tell a lot about a person from their data: from the places they go, to the length of their work-out, to their preferred breakfast cereal. And with this amount of private information stored inside an iPhone or a computer, it isn't surprising that people are unwilling to hand them over to a recycler once they're no longer in-use. But is this a valid concern, considering that we hand this information over willfully, all the time, to large corporations for whom it is a valuable currency? A study by REPIC, the UK's biggest producer compliance scheme for e-waste, showed that 65% of users of electronic items have concerns about their data being breached. Of these, more than a quarter didn't know how to delete their data, while a third didn't think they had to. Evidently, education surrounding personal data and how to manage it hasn't caught up to the large role it plays in the lives of most people. This isn't just problematic for its implications to e-waste.  It also raises the question of whether we really are willing participants in the Big Data economy. Today, Ugo and Neil talk about the ethics of personal data collection with reference to The Glass Room: a pop-up interactive exhibition that we visited lat month in London. The Glass Room aims to educate people about how their data is being monitored through location services, search histories, health information from synced products like Fitbit trackers, likes, messages, and even the exact amount of time in which your attention span is held by a certain article. With google now advertising services such as '23andme', which offers full DNA profiling of users, it seems that privacy is becoming increasingly unattainable. But why should you care? Even if you are not concerned with ways in which your data (or the profit generated by it) is used by corporations such as Alphabet - the multinational conglomerate that claims Google as one of its subsidiaries - then the thought of how it might be used illegally by those who successfully breach these enormous stores of data is a terrifying enough thought on its own. There are ways to take back some control over the information you hand out. Experts at the Glass Room 'Ingenious bar' handed out Data Detox Kits, which spell out an 8-day plan to help users seek to understand and reclaim the online portrait built up of them from their data. Ugo and Neil brainstorm some of their own techniques. Duck Duck Go is a search engine which does not track users, and a new version of Firefox Mozilla called Firefox Focus, designed specifically for mobile phones, makes it incredibly easy to delete traces of what you have searched. If you do need to continue using services such as Google and Facebook, check out your privacy settings so you know what information is being shared. With the rise of the Internet of Things, the environmental and social cost of Big Data is only going to grow. If we are to have a truly democratic society founded on trust and openness, the circumstances surrounding collection and usage of personal data need to be made far more transparent.

You can tell a lot about a person from their data: from the places they go, to the length of their work-out, to their preferred breakfast cereal. And with this amount of private information stored inside an iPhone or a computer, it isn't surprising that people are unwilling to hand them over to a recycler once they're no longer in-use. But is this a valid concern, considering that we hand this information over willfully, all the time, to large corporations for whom it is a valuable currency? A study by REPIC, the UK's biggest producer compliance scheme for e-waste, showed that 65% of users of electronic items have concerns about their data being breached. Of these, more than a quarter didn't know how to delete their data, while a third didn't think they had to. Evidently, education surrounding personal data and how to manage it hasn't caught up to the large role it plays in the lives of most people. This isn't just problematic for its implications to e-waste.  It also raises the question of whether we really are willing participants in the Big Data economy. Today, Ugo and Neil talk about the ethics of personal data collection with reference to The Glass Room: a pop-up interactive exhibition that we visited lat month in London. The Glass Room aims to educate people about how their data is being monitored through location services, search histories, health information from synced products like Fitbit trackers, likes, messages, and even the exact amount of time in which your attention span is held by a certain article. With google now advertising services such as '23andme', which offers full DNA profiling of users, it seems that privacy is becoming increasingly unattainable. But why should you care? Even if you are not concerned with ways in which your data (or the profit generated by it) is used by corporations such as Alphabet - the multinational conglomerate that claims Google as one of its subsidiaries - then the thought of how it might be used illegally by those who successfully breach these enormous stores of data is a terrifying enough thought on its own. There are ways to take back some control over the information you hand out. Experts at the Glass Room 'Ingenious bar' handed out Data Detox Kits, which spell out an 8-day plan to help users seek to understand and reclaim the online portrait built up of them from their data. Ugo and Neil brainstorm some of their own techniques. Duck Duck Go is a search engine which does not track users, and a new version of Firefox Mozilla called Firefox Focus, designed specifically for mobile phones, makes it incredibly easy to delete traces of what you have searched. If you do need to continue using services such as Google and Facebook, check out your privacy settings so you know what information is being shared. With the rise of the Internet of Things, the environmental and social cost of Big Data is only going to grow. If we are to have a truly democratic society founded on trust and openness, the circumstances surrounding collection and usage of personal data need to be made far more transparent.

Lewis Dartnell, fellow of astrobiology at the University of Leicester, asked himself a difficult question. If tomorrow we woke up and all the technologies we had come to depend on had ceased to exist, what knowledge would we need to re-build them from scratch? The book that came out of his research, called 'The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch', explores the history and inner workings of many of the facets of our modern society. Using the idea of a 'technological apocalypse' as a thought experiment, it forces us to consider our dependence on the systems and technologies that we take for granted every day. When we invited Lewis to come and talk at the first Fixfest at LSE in October this year, he raised the important point that knowledge has become highly specialised. Given the number of people that are involved in the various stages of production of any single item, from the design, to the mining of the raw minerals used, to the assembly, a repairer seeking to understand that item must be multi-skilled, curious, and eager to learn. In this interview, Lewis talks to us about how people might be inspired to become more curious in the world around them. We also put Lewis' thought experiment to members of our community at a recent Restart Party in Tower Hamlets. While some seemed to be thrilled at the idea of a world without computers, for others, the prospect was panic-inducing. Imagining the unimaginable raises important questions about the real problems facing our word today. Would we want to recreate the world exactly as it is? What would we change, and how would we change it?

Lewis Dartnell, fellow of astrobiology at the University of Leicester, asked himself a difficult question. If tomorrow we woke up and all the technologies we had come to depend on had ceased to exist, what knowledge would we need to re-build them from scratch? The book that came out of his research, called 'The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch', explores the history and inner workings of many of the facets of our modern society. Using the idea of a 'technological apocalypse' as a thought experiment, it forces us to consider our dependence on the systems and technologies that we take for granted every day. When we invited Lewis to come and talk at the first Fixfest at LSE in October this year, he raised the important point that knowledge has become highly specialised. Given the number of people that are involved in the various stages of production of any single item, from the design, to the mining of the raw minerals used, to the assembly, a repairer seeking to understand that item must be multi-skilled, curious, and eager to learn. In this interview, Lewis talks to us about how people might be inspired to become more curious in the world around them. We also put Lewis' thought experiment to members of our community at a recent Restart Party in Tower Hamlets. While some seemed to be thrilled at the idea of a world without computers, for others, the prospect was panic-inducing. Imagining the unimaginable raises important questions about the real problems facing our word today. Would we want to recreate the world exactly as it is? What would we change, and how would we change it?

How many gadgets do you need to fix to break a world record? The repair café held in Cambridge earlier this month has set the new magic number: 232. Today, Ugo and Jon talk to Nicole Barton from Cambridge Carbon Footprint, who helped to organise the 'World's Biggest Repair Café' on Saturday the 11th of November. The event was held with the intention of surpassing the 150 repairs that took place in Vauréal, France - previously the largest community repair event to date.  Out of the 375 items brought in, the 232 items repaired in Cambridge - which included gadgets, clothing, bicycles and furniture - shows a success rate that adheres more or less to what Nicole estimates is the average success rate for community repair events in Cambridge: around 65%. Nicole helped put together the Cambridgeshire Repair Café network, which is a collaboration between various organizations including Cambridge Carbon Footprint and Circular Cambridge. She sees repair as playing an important role in tackling climate change. But there are other important benefits, too. She talks to us about what she calls the 'kindness' element: the warmth that emerges in a room where people volunteer their time to help others to learn new skills. In Cambridge, where the 'Town vs. Gown' divide can sometimes be keenly felt, this serves as a way to unite the community. This is equally the case in London, where small communities within the metropolis are incredibly important. Our own community lead, Jon Stricklin-Coutinho, talks about his experience working with our community of volunteers both in London and beyond. He talks through some of the ways that its possible to get involved, either by attending a Restart Party in your local area (whether that means volunteering, learning to repair, or just having a look around) or by starting up one yourself. The key to successful community repair is forging connections. People are often more than willing to help, and often all it takes is a bit of asking around in order to find a usable space and some willing co-hosts and volunteers. Organising a repair event does take some amount of admin work, like anything else. But issues with safety and liability are easily navigable, and should not put people off. The joy that comes out of a successful repair event makes it more than worth it, even if no records are broken.

How many gadgets do you need to fix to break a world record? The repair café held in Cambridge earlier this month has set the new magic number: 232. Today, Ugo and Jon talk to Nicole Barton from Cambridge Carbon Footprint, who helped to organise the 'World's Biggest Repair Café' on Saturday the 11th of November. The event was held with the intention of surpassing the 150 repairs that took place in Vauréal, France - previously the largest community repair event to date.  Out of the 375 items brought in, the 232 items repaired in Cambridge - which included gadgets, clothing, bicycles and furniture - shows a success rate that adheres more or less to what Nicole estimates is the average success rate for community repair events in Cambridge: around 65%. Nicole helped put together the Cambridgeshire Repair Café network, which is a collaboration between various organizations including Cambridge Carbon Footprint and Circular Cambridge. She sees repair as playing an important role in tackling climate change. But there are other important benefits, too. She talks to us about what she calls the 'kindness' element: the warmth that emerges in a room where people volunteer their time to help others to learn new skills. In Cambridge, where the 'Town vs. Gown' divide can sometimes be keenly felt, this serves as a way to unite the community. This is equally the case in London, where small communities within the metropolis are incredibly important. Our own community lead, Jon Stricklin-Coutinho, talks about his experience working with our community of volunteers both in London and beyond. He talks through some of the ways that its possible to get involved, either by attending a Restart Party in your local area (whether that means volunteering, learning to repair, or just having a look around) or by starting up one yourself. The key to successful community repair is forging connections. People are often more than willing to help, and often all it takes is a bit of asking around in order to find a usable space and some willing co-hosts and volunteers. Organising a repair event does take some amount of admin work, like anything else. But issues with safety and liability are easily navigable, and should not put people off. The joy that comes out of a successful repair event makes it more than worth it, even if no records are broken.

Today, Lauren and Ugo talk to John Bumstead - an artist and laptop refurbisher whose company 'RKDL Inc' (pronounced "Roadkill") gives a new life to old Apple Macbooks. Most Macbooks end up recycled - shredded for raw materials. According to John, many discarded Macbooks are only halfway through their lifetime at 5-7 years, and good for another half a decade or more, after a few tweaks. John trawls the internet for wholesale Macbooks. He buys them, refurbishes them, and sells them on at an affordable price. His process sheds light on the somewhat hidden circular world of the online secondhand laptop trade. But John isn't just a refurbisher: he's a living example of ways in which repair can be a highly imaginative act. After seeing dozens and dozens of Apple laptops come in to his workshop with strange and wonderful visuals, John started to photograph the faults and upload them online. When he saw they were gathering interest, he began to experiment further, overlaying them with photographs with tree branches, which he loads onto machines with graphics defects in order to purposely distort the image. "I never would have imagined starting my business that I would be a visual artist", says John.  "I had no idea. And so many amazing things have come out of it." John's work is an example of glitch art - a fascinating movement that sees error and failure as a source of beauty: or in John's words, as an "electronic ballet". Communities of glitch artists and repairers might share many of the same aims and philosophies: what better way to highlight planned obsolescence than to draw attention to the aesthetics of error that so many of us are familiar with? Drawing our attention to the fallibility of technology, glitch art gives us a fascinating glimpse into the world behind the polished exterior, the world that repairers have to immerse themselves in each time they diagnose and attempt to fix an item. We also share some of our own stories about screen faults, including a spectacular DIY fix at a Restart Party that involved a series of clothes pegs positioned carefully to keep a screen working. Screens are by far the most fragile component of the objects we use everyday - our smartphones and laptops - and this fragility is a huge source of frustration. Pushing for more easily replaceable screens is not just a matter of convenience, it is a matter of principle: we do not really own an object until we can understand how to fix it ourselves.