A designer is using a standard Phillips-head screwdriver to unscrew the back of a phone somewhere in an Amsterdam workshop. No glue. No specialized equipment. No pentalobe theater that is exclusive. There are only a few visible screws and a drawer-like battery. The point is that it appears almost embarrassingly simple.
The notion that a gadget should be a long-term relationship rather than a brief affair is what members of the so-called Slow Tech movement consistently return to. Additionally, the ambition has recently expanded in a way that ten years ago would have seemed ridiculous. Not for three years. Not seven. Fifty. A laptop, a phone, a kitchen appliance that might outlive the person who opened it.
It’s an odd idea to accept, particularly in a field where release cycles are used to gauge success. The Framework engineers in California, the Fairphone team in the Netherlands, and the tinkerers behind tool libraries in Washington, DC, don’t sound like they’re chasing a hype curve. To be honest, they sound more like furniture makers. There’s a feeling that the gadget should be something you take care of rather than something you lament when the battery runs out.
The figures that underlie all of this are not nuanced. Only about 22% of the approximately 62 million tons of e-waste that are produced worldwide each year are recycled, according to WHO data. Before anyone even turns on a brand-new smartphone, it produces about 60 kg of CO2. It’s difficult not to feel that the upgrade reflex that many of us inherited from the 2010s—the casual swap every eighteen months—was never truly sustainable when you see those numbers rise year after year. It was simply practical.
The speed at which the cultural mood has changed is intriguing. Over the past year, Reddit mentions of “slow tech” have increased by 95%, and conversations about repair and reuse have increased by 82%, according to Back Market, a marketplace for reconditioned electronics. In the EU, refurbished smartphones now make up a larger portion of sales than the flatter market for new devices. This does not indicate that the movement has succeeded. However, the appetite is no longer marginal.
Even sympathetic engineers are skeptical of the fifty-year goal, though. Reversible adhesives, batteries treated as consumables rather than fixtures, publicly available schematics, and software updates disconnected from hardware refresh cycles are just a few of the assumptions that must be reconsidered when building a device to last that long. Decades ago, Patagonia did a similar thing with jackets. Amplifiers from the 1970s have been cherished by hi-fi enthusiasts for fifty years. No one in the industry has provided a compelling explanation for why a phone should be exempt.
The obvious gaps will be highlighted by skeptics. Software from 2056 cannot be run on a 2026 chip. Lithium chemistry deteriorates. Standards change over time. Additionally, there is a conflict that no one can completely resolve: churn, not stewardship, is how tech companies generate the majority of their revenue. It’s similar to asking a casino to promote early withdrawals when you ask Apple or Samsung to create a gadget for a grandchild.
Even so, it’s difficult to ignore the subtle, silent changes. Two strangers were hunched over a broken laptop in a repair café in a community hall in London. A modular keyboard with interchangeable switches. Instead of being traded in, a Framework laptop is being passed down. These aren’t big gestures. They have a sense of domesticity. However, they allude to a different relationship with the things we carry, one in which a gadget may sustain scratches similar to those of a leather wallet and yet remain intact. It’s really still unclear if that future will materialize in five years, fifty, or never.
