In some respects, iFixit is the twenty-first-century analogue to Lydia Maria Childs and The American Frugal Housewife. Just as nineteenth-century frontier women lacked complete information on how to manage and fix their stuff, so too do contemporary Americans overrun with technologies. “How many objects are in a home?” Kyle asks as he exits into San Luis Obispo. “Is it a thousand? Ten thousand? It’s an order of magnitude more than it was fifty years ago. And yet the economics don’t work for there to be a local espresso-machine repair guy. So either consumers have to figure out how to repair
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