The Restart Project Podcast

This month, to celebrate the Restart’s 5th birthday, we’re looking back on some of our favourite moments from past podcast episodes and Restart Parties. We’ve gotten to know a lot of interesting people over the years, and a lot of interesting machines – from old German radios, to noisy dishwashers, to DIY arcade games. This episode features conversations with repair and tinker heroes, designers, a...

Every generation has a different attitude to gadgets; but skills don't become obsolete the same way gadgets do. To have a functioning repair economy, it's important for generations learn from each other. This week, we hear from people of different ages (including a father-son duo) about their view of repair. Restarter Alvin Hardy shares his perspectives on how repair education has changed. Janet a...

This Week, Ugo is joined by Clare Ollerenshaw from London's Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB) to talk about their goals for a circular economy and a more resource efficient capital. While air pollution has rightly received the environmental focus of the new mayor, what about waste? With London's population expected to reach 11 million by 2039, and local recycling rates in decline, we need to come...

Today, Ugo is joined by Restart's IT team lead Dave Lukes and Peter Mui from Fixit Clinic, a U.S. based 'troubleshooting and discovery workshop'. The Restart Project and Fixit Clinic are a bit like twins separated at birth. We share their belief in the value of teaching repair, rather than just providing a free repair service. Peter Mui talks to us about his vision of the 'ideal Fixit clinic', in...

The internet has become so central to our daily lives that it is nearly impossible to imagine what would happen if we woke up one day to find it had collapsed. But what is the internet really, and where does it come from? In a previous episode, we touched on the vocabulary of immateriality that we use to talk about the internet. When we store things in ‘the cloud’ and transfer things by ‘airdrop’,...

After the infamous failure of Google Glass, it seemed that people were still unconvinced about the idea of wearable technology. Videos taken with Google Glass show confused and suspicious faces peering at the wearer, trying to discern how they are being seen, by whom, and how this information was being stored. To many people, something about the project seemed fundamentally creepy. But recently, a...

Keyboards are such a part of our daily lives. We're typing this now on one: an Apple membrane keyboard that's about 12 years old. You may not think a lot about your keyboard even though you spend so much time with it. Janet talks with Jon, Community Lead at The Restart Project, and Ben Skidmore, long-time Restarter and recent engineering graduate, two big keyboard enthusiasts. They both use mechan...

Trust is a fundamental part of any relationship, be it with humans or electronics. We place lots of trust and expectation on devices we bring into our homes - you might trust a toaster to make high quality toast. What happens to that trust when the device not only makes toast, but changes data on the internet? Restart Podcast This week Ugo is joined by Matthew Sheret from the design studio IF. Fou...

What's the difference between a prerecorded birdsong and a real one? 3D sound aims to bring audio technology even closer to real life. But does it really work, and will it render all our regular listening devices obsolete? Today, our researcher Lauren is joined by Dougie Brown from Cassini Sound, and regular Restart volunteer Ben Skidmore. The beginnings of 3D sound technologies have been around f...

The universe of Tim Hunkin is one of whirring gears, flashing lights and strange characters: but underneath the fun and frivolity is an in-depth examination of the history of society’s relationship with technology. Many of our Restarters fondly remember Tim Hunkin as the host of the ‘The Secret Life of Machines’, which aired for the first time in 1988 and ran for 18 episodes. Tim and his friend Re...

This week, we talk about two kinds of risk: one environmental, and one technical. From Citizen Science projects to community-run operating systems, we examine how we can have more of a say in how to keep ourselves safe. The Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant, destroyed by the dual earthquake-tsunami disaster of 2011, continues to leak dangerous levels of nuclear radiation. In the aftermath of t...

Janet and Neil are joined by Jim Boulton, ‘digital archaeologist’ and curator of the exhibition 64 Bits, a project that chronicles the history of the World Wide Web. Looking back at our recent visit to 64 Bits at HereEast in Stratford, we talk about some of the things that stood out both for their nostalgic value, and what they can tell us about our experience of the web today. Featuring 32 comput...

Today we talk to Tad Vaas from TFix, a repair centre in South London that mixes corporate and consumer repairs with a very interesting twist. TFix performs professional soldering operations that require specialist knowledge and equipment. Tad and his team have developed a way to go deeper into the repair process than other repair shops, using a highly complicated soldering technology called BGA. B...

Most people think of electronics and gardening as two very distinct hobbies, belonging to two very different worlds. But there are some striking similarities. Today we are joined by Lou and Ed from Friche: an art and design studio working towards eco-structures for urban spaces, and our neighbours in our workspace in Bermondsey. Lou and Ed encourage us to re-think the arbitrary distinction we draw...

Shenzhen, China is home to over 4,000 product design firms and has been labelled the ‘city of design’. But does this create opportunities for more sustainable, open and modular gadgets, or it perpetuating a culture of cheap and disposable production? Today we talk to David Li, founder of Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab, and he provokes us to rethink and update our notions of manufacture in China. Her...

Today we talk to Simon November from Test-Achats (Test-Aankoop) in Belgium, an association that uses crowdsourcing to identify ‘hot-spots’ of consumer frustration and investigate the gadgets that keep breaking. Test-Achats has been defending the interests of consumers in Belgium since 1957, and is entirely funded by its 350,000 members. But you don’t need to be a member to participate in the proje...

After the demise of the repair shops on Tottenham Court Road, London’s repair businesses took a blow. But a visit to Stratford Computer Fair reveals that face-to-face electronic repair and sales are not yet things of the past. The closure of shops on Tottenham Court Road, and the disappearance of the computer fair hosted by the UCL Student Union in Bloomsbury, was preceded by a slow but steady dem...

Today we head to the US, where a group of high school students and teachers talk to us about an exciting project that began as just a pop-up stall in a library. We first met Jeannie at Mozilla festival in London. When she returned to the US, Jeannie combined some of the Restart ethos with her own work. With the help of students like Daniel at Fieldston school, she set up a student-repair tutoring...

Those who make it behind the Genius Bar are under legal obligation to not disclose information about Apple. Today, joined by Restarter David Méry, we investigate the tech giant's attitude to post-sales service with the help of some anonymous ex-Geniuses and online forum Reddit. The Genius Bar has evolved over time, transforming from an actual bar to the newly devised 'grove', which is to feature l...

On the 14th of March, International ‘Pi Day’, Ugo is joined by Restart volunteer Ben Skidmore and Raspberry Pi Creator Eben Upton. The Raspberry Pi (which actually takes its name from the programming language 'Python') is a tiny and affordable computer that teaches programming to children and adults. It is designed to function as the ‘missing piece’ that connects otherwise obsolete components: old...

When we grow up, we buy things for sensible reasons, and don’t lose get bored or lose interest with our ‘toys’… or so the story goes. But recent fads for personal mobility devices would suggest otherwise. This week, Ugo is joined by Restart volunteer and IT team leader Dave Lukes, and our new Community Lead Jon Stricklin-Coutinho to take a look at some of these toys for big kids: the hoverboard, o...

In this episode, we explore the qualities in our gadgets that are aimed at a particular gender. Whether it’s as obvious as a pink diamante-studded telephone, or as subtle as a smartphone screen that is slightly too large to fit in the average female hand, these biases are all around us. We looked for written commentary on how interlinked aspects of sex and gender played out in the history of desig...

Our devices talk to us all the time. It is easy to forget that these blips, bleeps and bloops are not merely generated by the things themselves: they are designed by people. Today we talk to one of these people: Dougie Brown from Cassini Sound, a team of composers, sound designers and recordists who design sounds for film and television – and for the Restart Project! Dougie help make our music, re...

This week, Ugo is joined by Lawrence Carey, one of the founders of the Whitegoods Trade Association. Lawrence sheds some light on the complex relationships that exist between consumers, manufacturers and third party repair businesses when it comes to the machines we rely on at home: dryers, dishwashers, washing machines. As we explored in our 2-part podcast on Steve the Spindoctor (here and here),...

Virtual Reality (VR) has been heralded as ‘the next big thing’ for a couple of years now. But its relatively slow start has people asking questions about how ‘big’ it will really be. This week, we investigate ways in which consumer VR might feed into our throwaway economy, or alternatively, ways in which VR might help us imagine more sustainable futures. We take a look at the three main higher-end...