How old do you have to be to quit trying to learn?

My 95 year old mother is having trouble remembering how to get into her Email but she has a friend help her every few days. I bought her a used PC about 10 years ago and for a while she was even taking classes although being pretty deaf didn't help matters. Of course she was afraid she would break it if she turned it on. I showed her that pulling the plug out of the wall didn't phase it one bit so she became more adventurous and eventually got to where she was writing to all her old friends (most much younger than she). We got her a newer PC and she went to a cable connection so for a while she was at a higher baud rate than we were here at home. Recently tho she has wanted to use the computer less and less and there isn't anything which can change that fact. She is definitely slowing down. There is nothing I can do to solve that issue for her much as I have tried to come up with ways to make it easier and safer to get on line. Some things are just so.

I have been fixing things for 55 years. It probably got started when my Grandmother told me I was a bad person for breaking something at age 6. Whatever. I was fairly smart so I learned how to put arms back on dolls and wheels back on toy trucks. I watched as grown ups fixed things and at some point my dad let me (didn't punish me for) disassemble my first 1 cylinder engine off his nonfunctional rototiller when I was 9. Yes I got it mostly apart and no I couldn't put it back together so that it worked. But at least I tried.

Our neighbor at the time was a wise old Connecticut Yankee carpenter, furniture maker and farmer who milked his 3 Hereford cows by hand. He made cider with an ancient cider press that he used a car jack in to create the pressure to squeeze the pulp. Every spring we kids would gather around while Wilbur (yes Wilbur) and his son Don would take the battery out of his tractor and put it into the old Model T truck doodlebug. There was much cleaning of spark plugs (all 4) and distributor caps (back when ignition systems had caps to clean). Then they would pull the old truck around the hay field with Wil's tractor until it crackled to life once again (there was no muffler). They used it to pull a side delivery hay rake which had iron wheels which could never go flat. Once the Model T was running it was time to get the International Harvester baler running. It had a Wisconsin 4 cylinder “VE” motor which required the same TLC as the Model T truck engine.

What these old machines still had after 40 years of use was the designed in ability to be repaired.

International Harvester Corporation is no more and Ford Motor Corporation today is a far cry from the early days when every vehicle came with its own tool kit which would allow the operator to repair what went wrong.

It seems “Designed Obsolescence” is a parameter that every successful manufacturing company uses today as a means of maintaining a profitable and ever increasing market for their goods. My wife got a new lap top computer for Christmas. It is an HP. It came loaded with Windows 7. It would not run our old trusty HP Deskjet 855C. HP explains that the 855C is one of the products which they don't support because its so old. The new 64 bit operating system apparently doesn't work with any of our old software. Great, so we have to buy all new software and a new printer. How is this a good thing for us?

Turns out that I found an HP driver for the 855C written for the 845C printer which will allow us to keep using the old printer if I plug into the right rear USB port of the laptop. Some times dumb luck and persistence is the way we discover things. That’s how Christopher Columbus discovered the western hemisphere. Dumb luck for him. Bad luck for the inhabitants who lived there. Belief systems are what drive our various cultures.

For the Spaniards it was the belief that they were on a divine mission from God. For the unlucky Incas, Maya's and Aztecs it was the belief that the Spaniards were somehow Gods themselves. If you use that analogy to define corporate logic as it concerns the consumer, you see how the corporations view it as their divine right to make a profit. Coincidentally the Corporations spend millions on advertising to convince the consuming public that we need the newest gadget which will make our lives even more pleasurable if we buy.

How do we reconcile the real need for corporations to profit in a market economy, with the real need of consumers to be able to purchase, own and maintain the gadgets they spend good money for.

First, consumers need to be smarter about what they buy. Just because its new doesn't mean its going to be better. Look at the recent recalls by GM for faulty ignition switches and Toyota’s faulty throttle pedal debacle. Checker Cab Company is out of business even though they produced a utilitarian car for years for the taxi business. They were unable to compete with General Motors and Ford who had much bigger R and D and advertising budgets and came out with a whole fleet of new design vehicles every year. “It's what the consumer wants”. Really?

The article in Wikipedia about Planned Obsolescence is a very well thought through article and should be read by anyone who has an interest in the societal implications of “value engineering”. For me however I will continue to try to make things work on my schedule, not someone else's, for as long as I can still use my hands and have eyesight. After that, all I'll be able to do is give free advise and encouragement to folks who are willing to investigate how things work and the willingness to try to repair what they have.

Here are some motivations which anyone interested in fixing things may be feeling. Perhaps the thing is so broken or useless as it is, that there can be no down side to taking it apart. The fixer is so curious as to what makes it tick that they don't care if they ding it up. (Think cadavers in med school). Maybe there is no replacement for the item the fixer needs and it must somehow to be made to work. Or, the fixer has just had an epiphany and needs to invent something new which makes the old item more useful. Or maybe you just feel like it. Finally, every time you take another persons invention apart and make the attempt to make it work again or perhaps improve it, you are learning about what their thought process was when they built it. That will always help when confronted with a similar issue in the future.

I think fixers and inventors are the flip side of the same coin because in both cases they are willing to expend their time to understand a problem well enough to find a solution. This is not a new concept. The Hippocratic Oath of “Do no harm”, came from the Greeks. Sometimes “leave well enough alone” is a wiser choice than opening “a can of worms”. Sometimes after you have dealt with all the worms and got everything to work, you have learned what you didn't know before. Sometimes, you end up fixing way more problems than you thought you had to start with. Sometimes that is what it takes to fix the problem. Sometimes you fail. That’s life. But, when you get to be 95 like my mother, you may have an excuse to ease back and let others take the reins and solve the problems. Until then shouldn't we all keep trying?