Open hardware for a sustainable future

Open hardware is nothing new - go back a 100 year and nearly all hardware (technology) was "open". Not only was it open, but it was meant to last and be repaired - costumers wouldn't dream of investing in technology they could not master/understand/repair. Before cheap credit and "Made in China" - baying a machine (car, tractor, mill, drill you name it) was a investment taken from the household saving - and had to last.
It had to be:

• Durable
• Reliable (here I am talking 50 years if not longer)
• Simple
  
• Repairable (either by the owner or the local blacksmith)
• Supported (spare-parts should be obtainable for years to come)
  

As of now we are in the hands of products with these characteristics:

• short-lived (breaks down for no apparent reason within months of purchase)
  
• Unreliable
• Unnecessarily complex (and glued together)
  
• Unrepairable (unless shipped back to whatever (sweatshop) country it came from, where it is replaced by a new unit totally)
• Supported (until the next model comes out in 6 months time)
  

I convinced the future of technology is going to have the pre-WW2 characteristics. I base this on several reasons:

• No possibility to uphold statuesque consumerism.
  
• No possibility to uphold the complexity in the global market.
  
• possibility to uphold the current growth/Fiat based banking system.
  

If you dont belive me - okay.. watch this or go on living in oblivion


The condensed conclusion of this is the following is that if we wont our (electronic) stuff in the future it has to be: Durable, reliable, repairable and Supported. Put to this cheap and low-energy.

This goal can be achieved in many ways, but I believe the most promising way is the open hardware initiative see eg. this.
Arduino is a very good example of open hardware.
I will in the future try to find good examples of open hardware and give my 2 cents to what open hardware I would like to see.