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do you want to know the cool thing about kilns, mastodon

so kilns are really heavy and kind of humongous. they have a lot of insulation. so it's hard to take them to a place to get them repaired

so because of this they are user servicable. the parts that break can be taken out and replaced by the artists who use them. there are good youtube tutorials.

the thermocouple is the most common failure point and in almost every kiln you can change it out with a screwdriver and connecting a couple of wires, it takes about 15 minutes and most of that is looking at videos

when my jen-ken kiln broke it was still under warranty and they sent us the parts and repair instructions and my husband managed to get the heating elements replaced in about an hour. (he is already good at that kind of thing, it would have taken me longer)

we live in a world where very few of our machines give us those kind of control and kilns are one of those things that really make you realize it

we have little to no agency over our phones, our computers, our medical equipment, our cars

it made me think: how do i get this level of control over other technologies on a day to day basis.

how do we make a world where people have agency over the machines we own and depend on?

people talk about "enshittification" as everything getting worse, which it is. but the really damaging part of it is that we are forced to cede control over our tech and hand it to people who see consumers as exploitable resources without much power to switch to something else

i think if we can expect what we get from kilns, from sewing machines, from bicycles, and apply that to the other things we depend on, we could be in a better place with our relationship to technology

Nora Reed

so much of the trauma of living in the modern world is about lack of agency, a death by a thousand cuts of the indignity of having our lives controlled by microsoft, by facebook, by google and apple

the thermocouple repair on my little evenheat kiln opened something in my brain. i already cared about right to repair but it made me imagine a structurally different and better relationship to technology

sometimes it's hard to imagine what a better world would even look like; my kilns give me a glimpse of what that could be.

please stop giving me individualist solutions to what i am pointing out is a structural problem. if i could turn comments off i would. fuckin mastodon

@nora so what you're saying is the kiln market is absolutely ripe for disruption, for an app to control your kiln remotely, for a "smart kiln" that empowers users to subscribe to different heat settings and durations... a premium tier for bisque... a Raku box (presumably for streaming the firing process to other devices in your home)

@ptoothfish thank god they do not seem to know how to use computers well enough to have that be a problem, based on their websites and manual layouts

@nora @ptoothfish Just wait. I thought about this, even just putting a smart plug on a kiln would be a cheap, single step.

IMO, the problem is voltage and heat resistance. Most digital devices use lead solder and have tiny circuit board connections also made of low-melting-point materials, that are generally pricey.

ROI. If it's "worth it" they'll do it.

@nora

my most recent glimpse came from working with 70s computer hardware at our computer museum. it's very serviceable, with full diagrams, docs and maintenance manuals available.

my hot take is that many or most aspects of today's computing are actually "agency friendly", but a couple of bad apples (pun not entirely unintended) are doing a lot of damage and governments are either not helping, or helping to make it worse.

@sqx @nora This was going on even into the 80's .. a Gould minicomputer I worked with came with a whole shelf of documentation.

I really love this story about kilns though. How much less e-waste and unnecessary life churn would we have if everything was this way?

@nora

Cool thread. ^^^

We need to teach people - and especially children - how to make. Knitting, carpentry, the sculptural arts, cooking, you name it, are all empowering because when you're a maker you're an agent, someone to does, not someone who is being done to.

Right to repair laws also go a long way, but first people need to convince themselves that they *can* repair.

@nora

Group problems need group solutions.

The "rugged individualism" that the broligarchs promote, it is just "divide & conquer" in disguise.

@nora
> so much of the trauma of living
You had me up to this point

@nora Yesssss, this!

But also: by facebook, by google, by apple, by microsoft, by the bosses, by the bureaucrats, by the police, by the government, by the judges, by the lawmakers. Our agency has been stolen from us and it hurts.