When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.
William Gibson, Zero History.
New paper: Planet of Fixers?
This paper explores the geographical distribution of independent and do‐it‐yourself information and communication technology maintenance and repair (INDIY ICT M&R) activity around the world. Josh Lepawsky, GEO: Geography & Environment
Planet of Fixers?
Maintenance and repair are on the agenda. In October 2018, The Economist declared repair to be, “as important as innovation” and went so far as to proclaim, “in a disposable society, to repair is to […]
“E-waste journalism that starts and ends in blighted foreign landscapes of dumps and scrap yards emphasizes the recycling trap…”. A short piece for MIT Press Reader.
Workshop | SAVVY Contemporary
None of us, not a single plant, critter, or human alike, remain untouched by the toxic. Knowingly or obliviously, through direct encounter or through a diluted intake downstream, its pervasiveness is so ubiquitous that to […]
The universal machine is local
(E)ven the celebrated ‘universal machine‘ must realize itself materially, therefore locally, in order to function.–Danowski, Déborah, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. The Ends of the World. Polity, 2017: 116.
What to Build With: Knowledge Politics or Truth Politics?
After giving a presentation on the research covered in my book, Reassembling Rubbish, I was asked if I had given thought to how my own ways of narrating stories about e-waste might inform public understandings […]
Facts are built
Facts are assembled by the work of people in conjunction with instruments, materials, and know-how. A house is built. So, too, is a fact. Despite decades of work in STS, it is still controversial to […]
Think you know e-waste?
Almost everything you know about e-waste is wrong Josh Lepawsky, Memorial University of Newfoundland Many of us think we know what electronic waste is because we wonder what to do with devices we no longer […]
Changing Waste
Any system that deals with the four aspects of modern waste – tonnage, toxicity, heterogeneity, and externalization – on a large scale will change waste infrastructure and what counts as trash. — Max Liboiron
Electronic Planet Research Lab 