A flattening I’m watching with interest is the gradually increasing digital integration of the physical world. I’m hopeful that it opens the door to at least ta

A flattening I’m watching with interest is the gradually increasing digital integration of the physical world. I’m hopeful that it opens the door to at least tap the brakes on the enshittification of our physical artifacts. For example, there are landfill dumps-ful of mass produced electrical devices like shavers, toothbrushes, AirPods and so on tossed out for want of just a replacement battery made too difficult to replace by those mass consumers. But I’m seeing green shoots of hope in people leveraging the flattening by sharing how-to hacks to repair these, and in rare but hopefully increasing number of cases, improve them for longer service lives. With gains in pushing CNC mills, wire EDM and more fabrication to small scales, big chunks of which are enabled by this flattening, I’m cautiously optimistic we will be able to distribute persisted, good engineering.