Stanford University

Most of what we throw away still works. That is the challenge I find hardest to look away from — not scarcity, but the speed at which functioning things become waste.

I started paying attention while dismantling a printer our school office had written off. The fault was a five-cent roller. Replacing it took eleven minutes. Nobody had opened the lid because nobody expected to be allowed to.

That, I think, is the real problem. It is not primarily technical. Repair is a question of permission: who is trusted to open the case, whether spare parts exist, whether a design anticipates its own repair or resists it. We have built an economy in which fixing something is often harder than replacing it, and then called that inevitable.

So I laminated a one-page guide and taped it beside the printer. Within a month, eleven students had used it. Two went on to repair a laminator and a projector on their own. None of them had become better engineers overnight. They had simply been told, in writing, that opening the case was allowed.

I do not think guides beside printers will fix consumption. But I do think the shift from "someone should fix this" to "I am allowed to try" is the most transferable thing I have ever taught anyone, and I would like to spend four years learning to design for it deliberately.