“It is vain to do with more
what can be done with fewer.”
- William of Occam
I have saved myself hundreds of dollars by invoking a little known secret of the technological universe.
Amazingly, the secret does not rely on any technical expertise, arcane wisdom, or high-level data access. I am going to tell you exactly what it is in a moment so you too can profit from it. This handy piece of understanding has come into play in the recent past as a DVD player, stereo (yes, I still have one), fax machine, and copier all broke down. The estimated repair bills would have been in the hundreds of dollars. But my chief concern was whether my home tech had reached a point of critical obsolescence. Like some kind of techno-chondriac, all I could think about was how much more I was in for in the coming months.
Then I recalled this secret of the universe that allowed me to fix all these devices by myself for about a dollar each.
No it did not involve a hammer and a hope. All I had to do was ignore the warnings that promised instant incineration if I looked inside the casing, unplug the devices, take out a screwdriver, and open them up. Inside I found the exact same cause for the breakdown in each of the machines. The problem was that a small rubber band had snapped.
Rubber band?
Hard to believe, but the simple fact is that most machines still rely on rubber bands for some crucial part of their operation. The secret of the universe to which I refer is simply this...if anything turns in your technode, look for a broken rubber band before assuming a more complicated cause.
This secret is probably an unexpected modern cousin of a similar principle in philosophy called Occam's Razor. This principle is named for the 14th century writer William of Occam who wrote "it is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer." In other words, simplest solutions first.
Fix the rubber band.
You would think that the digital revolution had dispensed with the lowly band of rubber as a useful part, replacing it with microchips and other intangible components. But a basic truth of life with machines stalls this evolution…the fact that the machines still have to operate in a world full of people. No matter how microscopic or virtual our devices get, they still have to be useable by human beings with our fat ears, our cumbersome fingers, our reams of paper, our clumsy mechanics.
In other words, they have to have knobs and buttons and moving parts and therefore transfer energy and motion between wheels and gears. They have to have rubber bands.
It is this collision between the digital and the physical that still provides the weakest link in the technological chain. When my fancy high-tech watch with all its digital functions finally had to be replaced, it was not because the microchips had failed. They were fine. The problem was that the plastic housing that gripped the wristband snapped and could not be mended. Since I could no longer keep the perfectly functioning watch on my wrist, it was useless to me. It had also become a parabox of time, but that is another matter.
Out it went.
In a similar vein, I wonder just how many healthy digital devices are lying in trash heaps right now simply because the plastic “on” switch snapped off.
It is the widespread use – and cheap cost – of rubber bands that places them so unexpectedly at this nexus of technology. Even by 1871, just one year after the rubber baron Dr. Benjamin Goodrich started the first commercial facility, rubber was already being used for a wide variety of applications from firehoses to cigar straps to preserving-jar rings. A century later, bands of rubber are still used in most machines to transfer the power of the motor, to convert the rotation of a knob, to seal off junctions, and even to hold components in place.
In the case of my stereo, when the tone arm refused to move, the repairman was certain he had to replace the entire assembly. But upon opening it up, I saw that a tiny rubber band on a counterweight that acted as a bumper against the casing had partially melted. It was gluing the tone arm in place. The total cost of replacement? 89 cents.
A different repair shop wanted $45 just to look at my DVD player; the owner was certain that the entire mechanism was defunct. Not so. Inside, I found that the rubber band connecting the motor to the spindle had snapped. I replaced that for a whopping two dollars, only because it was a special type of band with a custom diameter.
Ditto for the fax.
And by the time desktop copier stopping taking paper, I knew just what to look for and found it.
Lest you think that this secret only pertains to home technology, let me remind you of the Challenger disaster of 1986. Top scientists and engineers could not determine the cause of the crash, and it took the eccentric Noble Prize winning physicist Richard Feynmann to provide a clue. He did it not by relying on fancy quantum math, but by invoking this very secret of the universe...fix the rubber band. In a famous demonstration, Feynmann took one of the 0-rings – a round band of rubber used as a seal between two propellant chambers – and plunked it in a glass of ice water. Brittle enough to crack when he took it out seconds later, it pointed to a possible propellant leak through the band acting as a gasket.
On that day, at least, even the enormous technology of the space program came down to a lowly rubber band.
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