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A funny thing happened on the way to the pandemic. Neoliberalism's imperative to look only at how things work (not how they fail) created lean, overstretched supply chains that allowed investors to extract huge surpluses from companies (AKA: why everything is made in China).
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But even as distributed, local productive capacities around the world were being dismantled (redundancy != inefficiency), the maker movement was on the rise, expressing a kind of inchoate urge to be able to make, fix and improve things close to home.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90489974/the-maker-faire-spirit-is-helping-the-world-tackle-the-covid-19-crisis
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https://www.fastcompany.com/90489974/the-maker-faire-spirit-is-helping-the-world-tackle-the-covid-19-crisis
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And today, the gaps in the supply chain are being filled by the makers inspired by Make Magazine, Maker Faire, and the new DIY movement.
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Then I can ask questions and solicit suggestions from ad-hoc communities clustered around projects similar to mine; the electronic, written nature of these brainstorming sessions means that they form a permanent palipmsest that future makers can refer to.
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In addition to shopcraft and praxis spreading shoulder-to-shoulder in workshops (which happens in makerspaces, obvs), there's this invisible, massive continuous knowledge-transfer happening across time and space, thanks to networks.
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Today, we see that happening at speed, as plans, techniques, sources and improvements fly around the world at network speed, with makers taking on both production and maintenance of medical and safety equipment.
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Meanwhile, the medtech companies that treated service, parts, schematics and technical documentation as trade-secrets that secured a proprietary market advantage have taken a massive beating as the failings of this model were made manifest.
https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/15/invigilation/#loz-im-gain
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https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/15/invigilation/#loz-im-gain
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The pressure has taken its toll: the biggest ventilator companies in the world are opening up their document repositories to enable local repair and maintenance.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/884zvx/ventilator-companies-finally-make-the-life-saving-devices-easier-to-repair
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https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/884zvx/ventilator-companies-finally-make-the-life-saving-devices-easier-to-repair
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It's by no means complete, but it's a start. And in the meanwhile, guerilla efforts like @ifixit's repository of med-tech service manuals and documentation are filling in the gaps.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/36354/help-us-crowdsource-repair-information-for-hospital-equipment
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https://www.ifixit.com/News/36354/help-us-crowdsource-repair-information-for-hospital-equipment
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