People often talk about repairability as if it has disappeared.

Products are sealed. Batteries are glued in place. Components are increasingly integrated. Opening a modern device often feels more difficult than it should.

At first glance, the explanation seems obvious: manufacturers simply stopped caring about repairability.

But I think the reality is more complicated.

A bicycle is relatively easy to repair because most of its mechanisms are visible. A skilled mechanic can understand almost every part of the system. Given enough time, an owner can learn to do the same.

A modern smartphone is different.

Inside a device that fits in your pocket are multiple cameras, wireless radios, sensors, batteries, custom processors, encrypted storage, software services, and highly integrated electronics.

The product is no longer just a physical object. It is an entire ecosystem compressed into a small package.

The same thing has happened to cars.

And tractors.

And appliances.

And watches.

Products did not simply become harder to repair.

They became more complex.

For most of human history, repair happened in local workshops because machines were small enough to fit inside one person's understanding. A mechanic could reasonably know how every major system worked.

Today's machines are different.

A modern vehicle may contain dozens of computers, millions of lines of software, multiple communication networks, sensors, cameras, and electronic control units.

Diagnosing a fault often requires software tools before a wrench is ever picked up.

The local workshop did not become less capable.

The machine became larger than the workshop.

Repair has moved

Many people imagine repairability as a return to simpler products.

But complexity is not going away.

Society is not moving back toward carburetors, analog dashboards, and purely mechanical systems.

The future will almost certainly be more complex than the present.

The real question is whether our repair infrastructure evolves alongside it.

Historically, every technological era created its own workshops.

The blacksmith's forge supported agricultural tools and horses.

Machine shops emerged during industrialization.

Automotive garages emerged when cars became common.

Computer repair centers emerged when personal computers entered homes and offices.

Each generation developed the tools, expertise, and infrastructure required to maintain its machines.

Modern products may simply be waiting for their equivalent.

Perhaps the repair workshop of the future looks less like a garage and more like a laboratory.

Microscopes instead of timing lights.

Diagnostic software instead of paper service manuals.

Firmware tools alongside soldering stations.

Technicians who understand electronics, software, networking, batteries, and mechanical systems at the same time.

I do not know many places like that today.

But then again, there were not many automotive garages before automobiles became common either.

Complexity is not the problem

At the same time, complexity cannot be used to justify every restriction.

The debate around John Deere illustrates this distinction.

Modern agricultural equipment is extraordinarily sophisticated.

No reasonable person expects a farmer to design engine control software or reverse engineer a transmission controller.

But many farmers were not asking for that.

They were asking for access to the tools and information required to repair equipment they already owned.

The controversy was never really about complexity.

It was about access.

A machine can be complicated without being closed.

A repair may require specialized knowledge without requiring permission.

Complexity is unavoidable.

Dependency is a choice.

There is a difference between requiring expertise and withholding access.

There is a difference between complexity and control.

When a replacement component refuses to function because software prevents it from doing so, the problem is no longer purely technical.

It becomes a question of ownership.

For centuries, ownership implied the right to maintain, modify, and repair the things we possessed.

Today, that assumption is being tested.

The next generation of workshops

Perhaps repairability has not disappeared.

Perhaps we are simply living through a transitional period.

Products became software-defined faster than repair infrastructure could evolve.

The workshops capable of maintaining these systems are still emerging.

The standards are still being debated.

The laws are still being written.

The tools are still being developed.

If that is true, then the future of repairability may not lie in making products simpler.

It may lie in building a new generation of workshops capable of understanding their complexity while preserving the rights of the people who own them.

The opposite of repairability is not complexity.

It is disposability.