This chapter traces the history of repair. Beginning with the earliest human tools, like hand axes and spears, repair techniques evolved to keep pace with technology. In industrial era, the introduction of interchangeable parts promised to make repair easier and more reliable than ever before. But over the course of the twentieth century, manufacturers realized that product durability often wasn’t in their economic self interest. So they found ways to induce consumption and discourage repair. As early as the 1920s, firms were exploring the strategies that would eventually become known as “planned obsolescence.” By the 1950s, those techniques were cornerstones of the consumer economy.

looks at the impact digital technology is having on the way people communicate and how this has given rise to emoji culture. One of the key ways in which technology has an effect on language is in terms of what it does and doesn’t allow people to do. People adapt their language practices to the constraints imposed by the available technology, and, over time, these practices develop into linguistic conventions. Emoji are an archetypal product of the role technology plays in our life - they’re intimately tied to the devices we use to communicate. But they’re also a product of social media culture and of the way this technology has brought about a new informality in the way we write to each other. This chapter looks at how emoji fit within this larger context, as well as how features of human-computer interaction such as auto-predict are integrating these technologies ever more into the infrastructure of our daily lives.