Kyle wiens biography

I love exploring the world of things.

Where do they come from? What’s inside? How do they fall into disrepair, and what do people do about it? Our planet is impacted by consumption to a degree that no one expected and few understand. I’m trying to get a handle on it.

Along the way, I’ve raised a bit of a ruckus. My work with Right to Repair has inspired legislation enshrining consumer rights around the world. I’m also the CEO of iFixit, the free repair manual.

Forbes

Makiko Lizuka and Forbes Japan spent an issue covering people who are creating the rules for the future.

EFF Awardee

I was honored to receive an award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the preeminent digital rights advocacy organization.

Cal Poly Distinguished Alumni

My alma mater awarded me with the highest honor bestowed upon Cal Poly alumni.

Talks

Melbourne: Wheeler Center Keynote

I was invited to Australia to tell the story of iFixit and our hopes for the circular economy. We were joined by a guest fixer.

London FixFest: Discussion with Allison Powell

A lively discussion at the London School of Economics about IoT, cybersecurity, and the successes of the Right to Repair campaign.

Repair 2.0

Our vision for iFixit has stayed remarkably consistent over the years. Includes some e-waste footage from my travels in Ghana.

Sustainable Innovation: Samsung’s Note7 Screwup

Make do and mend: why repair is necessary for resource efficiency, and how Samsung isn’t moving in the right direction.

Writing

The Atlantic: Fix Things, Never Force It: Lessons From Grandpa

Remembering a tinkerer in an age of silicon and code.

Wired: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Very Idea of Ownership

It’s official: John Deere and General Motors want to eviscerate the notion of ownership.

Scientific American: The Right to Repair Should be Protected by Law

It's high time Congress fixes copyright law.

iFixit: iPhone 15 Teardown Reveals Software

  • Kyle wiens age
  • Kyle wiens net worth

    • Try This at Home: A Q&A with Kyle Wiens, Right-to-Repair Crusader

    Written by JEFF GREENWALD

    yle Wiens knows he can’t stop entropy—but he’s trying his best to slow it down. A pioneer of the growing “Right to Repair” movement, Wien’s passion—for more than two decades—has been to increase the ever-shrinking distance between the stuff we buy and the local landfill. This applies especially to microchipped items: things like computers, smartphones, and many new appliances.

    Increasingly, such digital devices are “locked”: There are “No user-serviceable parts inside,” and trying to affect a home repair can void the manufacturer’s warranty. From personal electronics to vacuum cleaners, soft-serve ice cream machines to heavy farm equipment, the items we purchase belong to us only in theory. If we’re not able or allowed to fix them (some require special tools you can’t find in stores), our agency over them dissolves. We’re forced to pay for expensive repairs, buy a newer model, and/or toss the object into a dubious electronics “recycling” bin.

    In 2003, Kyle Wiens, now 39, became the co-founder and CEO of iFixit, an international community dedicated to empowering consumers to extend the life, usefulness, and repairability of products that simply should not be “throwaway” objects. [For a look at this mindset in motion, see our sidebar, “One Night at the Fixit Clinic.”]

    A few years ago, IBIS World, an industry research firm, estimated that the ever-growing digital electronics industry has spawned only 150,000 jobs in tech repair, and that number has been declining by 2 percent a year for the last decade. IBIS contrasted that with jobs in auto repair, which number 500,000. To Gay Gordon-Byrne, Executive Director of Repair.org, there should be at least as many jobs in electronics repair, but that’s not the case for two reasons. One is the industry’s policies restricting or discouraging repairs; the other is a blind spot in our soc

    Kyle Wiens is the CEO of iFixit, the free repair manual. He’s dedicated his life to defeating the second law of thermodynamics, a battle fought in the courtroom as often as in the workshop. The Right to Repair campaign has, so far, successfully legalized cell phone unlocking and tractor repair.

    A dropped laptop in a college dorm room — and a subsequent failed online search for repair directions — was the inspiration for Kyle Wiens to co-found iFixit.com, an online database of user-generated digital repair manuals. Eleven years later, iFixit.com is the world’s largest online repair manual, with more than 3 million users a month fixing up their products for free on the site. “We’ve kind of forgotten how things work,” Wiens admits. “The moment you open any kind of electronic is challenging — it takes you out of your comfort zone. If you have a repair guide to walk you through the process, it’s really impressive what people can do.”

    John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect the people, the planet, and your privacy and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider, and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.

    John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact podcast. I am so excited to have with me back again my good friend, Kyle Wiens. He is the CEO and founder of iFixit. Welcome back to Impact Kyle. How are you today?

    Kyle: Oh I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on, I am really looking forward to this.

    John: It is an honor to have you on. You are one of the great entrepreneurs that I have in my life as a friend, your friend before anything else, and your website what you have created has made one of the biggest impacts aro

    iFixit

    American company aiming to ease repairing of consumer electronics

    iFixit (eye-FIX-it) is an American e-commerce and how-to website that publishes free wiki-like online repair guides and tear-downs of consumer electronics and gadgets. It also sells repair parts, tools, and accessories. It is a private company in San Luis Obispo, California founded in 2003, spurred by Kyle Wiens not being able to locate an Apple iBook G3 repair manual while the company's founders were attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

    Business model

    iFixit has released product tear-downs of new mobile and laptop devices which provide advertising for the company's parts and equipment sales. These tear-downs have been reviewed by PC World,The Mac Observer,NetworkWorld, and other publications.

    Co-founder Kyle Wiens has said that he aims to reduce electronic waste by teaching people to repair their own gear, and by offering tools, parts, and a forum to discuss repairs. In 2011, he travelled through Africa with a documentary team to meet a community of electronics technicians who repair and rebuild the world's discarded electronics.

    iFixit provides a software as a service platform known as Dozuki to allow others to use iFixit's documentation framework to produce their own documentation. O'Reilly Media'sMake and Craft magazines use Dozuki to feature community guides alongside instructions originally written by the staff for the print magazine.

    On April 3, 2014 iFixit announced a partnership with Fairphone.

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, iFixit and CALPIRG, the California arm of the Public Interest Research Group, worked with hospitals and medical research facilities to gather the largest known database of medical equipment manuals and repair guides to supp

  • Kyle wiens twitter
  • Kyle wiens ltt